The Internet of Sh%$

Yes, internet connected vacuum cleaners can spy on you and shout racist slurs at you.

Why on earth would someone want an internet connected vacuum cleaner?

I could understand Bluetooth, but the only people who get anything of value out of an internet connected vacuum are people who want to spy on you, like the FBI, CIA, NSA ……… Oh, now I get it.

It’s a tale as old as… well, the Internet of Things era. Robot vacuums made by Ecovacs have been reported roving around people’s homes, yelling profanities at them through the onboard speakers after the company’s software was found to be vulnerable to intrusion.

ABC News in Australia reports that there were recently multiple instances across the U.S. when owners of Ecovacs vacuums noticed their devices acting unusually.

“It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something,” Daniel Swenson, an owner of an Ecovac Deebot X2, told the outlet. “You could hear snippets of maybe a voice.” He opened the vacuum’s app to find a stranger was accessing its live camera feed and remote control feature, but assumed it might be an error. After resetting the password and rebooting the X2, the vacuum quickly started moving again:

This time, there was no ambiguity about what was coming out of the speaker. A voice was yelling racist obscenities, loud and clear, right in front of Mr Swenson’s son.

“F*** n******s,” screamed the voice, over and over again.

Perhaps the best part of this anecdote was Swenson’s incredulous conclusion that the situation “could have been worse.” But he’s right that it was nice of the hacker to let him know his vacuum was hacked instead of spying on him indefinitely.

Delightful.