Robot vacuums spewed racial slurs, obscenities after being hacked: Report

Published Oct 20, 2024  •  2 minute read

Foul-mouthed hackers allegedly gained access to robot vacuums in multiple cities across the United States over a few days earlier this year, according to ABC News in Australia. Photo by Getty Images

Clean floors, dirty mouths.

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Foul-mouthed hackers allegedly gained access to robot vacuums in many cities across the United States over several days earlier this year, according to Australia’s ABC News, spewing obscenities at owners through the speakers and taking control of the devices’ cameras.

The report said the incidents happened in late May.

The outlet reported all were Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2s, which ABC News was able to hack into earlier to expose security flaws.

Daniel Swenson, a lawyer in Minnesota, told ABC News that he was watching TV when the device started to malfunction and found out through the Ecovacs app that someone had gained access to the live camera feed and was able to control the vacuum remotely.

“It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something,” Swenson said, according to ABC News. “You could hear snippets of maybe a voice.”

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Swenson said he reset the password and rebooted the robot before joining his wife and 13-year-old son on the couch. He said the robot almost immediately started moving again.

That’s when the obscenities started, including the F-word and anti-Black racial slurs, within earshot of his son.

“I got the impression it was a kid, maybe a teenager (speaking),” Swenson told ABC News, adding he turned off the robot after that. “Maybe they were just jumping from device to device, messing with families.”

Swenson told ABC News he was even more concerned about them having access to the camera as they kept the robot on the same floor as their master bathroom.

“Our youngest kids take showers in there,” he said. “I just thought of it catching my kids or even me, you know, not dressed.”

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ABC News reported other alleged incidents, including a Deebot spewing obscenities and chasing a dog at a Los Angeles home on the same day the Swensons’ vacuum was hacked. A Deebot in El Paso, Texas, also started shouting racial slurs five days later, the outlet reported.

All of this happened six months after security researchers tried to warn Ecovacs of “significant security flaws” in its robot vacuums and app, according to ABC News, including Bluetooth accessibility issues.

Swenson told ABC News that the company blamed the incident on an “unauthorized person” accessing his Ecovacs account and password after a “credential stuffing” cyberattack. He said he was told that the person’s IP address was banned from gaining further access, ABC News reported.

Ecovacs told ABC News it found “no evidence” that accounts were hacked through a systems breach.

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