Robot vacuums were hacked to shout racial slurs across the US, exposing major security flaws in popular Ecovacs models.
Ecovacs’s robot vacuums are apparently quite easy to hack. The Chinese company has a long history of security breaches that allow nefarious folks with ill intent to do whatever they want with the lil’ suckers, like spying on its owners with its onboard camera.
Ecovacs just got hacked again in multiple U.S. states. The vacuum cleaners were made to shout racial slurs at unsuspecting people. What an odd dystopia we live in.
The issue is specifically with Ecovacs’ Deebot X2 model. The hackers gained control of the devices and used the onboard speakers to blast racial slurs at anyone within earshot. One such person was a lawyer from Minnesota named Daniel Swenson. He was watching TV when he heard some odd noises coming from the direction of his vacuum. He changed the password and restarted it. But then the odd sounds started up again. And then it started shouting racial slurs at him like a surly disgruntled maid.