{"id":224485,"date":"2025-11-04T08:03:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T14:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/programmer-discovers-his-smart-vacuum-was-spying-on-him"},"modified":"2025-11-04T08:03:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T14:03:15","slug":"programmer-discovers-his-smart-vacuum-was-spying-on-him","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/programmer-discovers-his-smart-vacuum-was-spying-on-him","title":{"rendered":"Programmer Discovers His Smart Vacuum Was Spying on Him"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p><iframe style=\"display: block; margin: 0 auto; width: 100%; aspect-ratio: 4\/3; object-fit: contain;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qj_UBLkCD78?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope;\n   picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Among other things, Harishankar discovered that the IRL weaponized roomba was sending logs, configuration files, and even unencrypted Wi-Fi credentials to the manufacturer\u2019s servers. It was also running Google Cartographer, enabling the device to create a detailed 3D map of his home.<\/p>\n<p>Most worryingly of all, the programmer found out that the command that shut down the vacuum was issued remotely \u2013 suggesting the manufacturer had root access via pre-installed rtty software, which allowed them to run any command or install any script on the device \u2013 meaning ILIFE\/Zhiyi either manually bricked the vacuum in response to Harishankar blocking data transmission, or had automated scripts that did so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among other things, Harishankar discovered that the IRL weaponized roomba was sending logs, configuration files, and even unencrypted Wi-Fi credentials to the manufacturer\u2019s servers. It was also running Google Cartographer, enabling the device to create a detailed 3D map of his home. Most worryingly of all, the programmer found out that the command that shut [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[418,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}