By REBECCA RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
For the Los Alamos Daily Post

There are few modern purchases more comforting than a robot vacuum. You name it something cute (Mine is named “mega maid” iykyk). You watch it bonk into furniture. You pretend it is your hardworking little cleaning buddy. You fantasize about your cat riding around on it. Normal things.

Unfortunately, your hardworking little buddy may also be a mobile camera, microphone, and home mapping system waiting for a backend security mistake.

Which is exactly what happened recently, yikes!

A software engineer was trying to do something extremely relatable and nerdy. He wanted to control his robot vacuum with a video game controller. What he got instead was access to thousands of robot vacuums around the world.

Yes. Thousands.

The accidental robot vacuum army

While building a custom app, the engineer used an AI coding assistant to reverse engineer how his vacuum talked to its cloud servers. That process uncovered a small problem. The same credentials that let him control his own vacuum also gave him access to nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries.

And these are not dumb little floor pucks anymore. These vacuums can:

• Stream live camera feeds
• Activate microphones
• Store maps of homes
• Share location data based on IP addresses

In other words, the exact features that make them good at cleaning also make them very good at surveillance.

To his credit, the engineer did the right thing and reported the bug instead of becoming the world’s weirdest supervillain (Captain Suck? Lord of the Dust Bunnies?). The company says the issue is now fixed.

Still. The fact that this was even possible should make everyone pause a bit.

Your vacuum knows your floor plan

Modern robot vacuums work by constantly collecting data about your home so they can tell a kitchen from a bedroom and avoid eating your phone charger. Some of that data lives in the cloud, not on the device itself.

So when a cloud security mistake happens, it is not just about a gadget malfunctioning. It is about strangers potentially seeing your house layout, listening through microphones, and watching live video from inside your home. I don’t know about you, but what happens at Casa Becky, stays at Casa Becky! Nobody needs to know about my cats and their love of costumes. 

Nothing says “cozy smart home” like the possibility of remote strangers watching you in your house, right?

This is the real smart home tradeoff

Cybersecurity folks have been waving red flags about smart home devices for years. The more connected devices we add to our homes, the more potential entry points we create.

The irony is almost poetic. We buy smart devices for convenience and security, then slowly fill our homes with internet connected cameras and microphones.

As of a few years ago, tens of millions of US households already had at least one smart home device. And people who buy one tend to buy more.

The AI twist

There is one extra wrinkle here that should make security teams sweat. The engineer found this issue while using an AI coding assistant. These tools make it easier than ever for people to explore software systems, including finding security flaws.

AI is lowering the barrier to entry for innovation. It is also lowering the barrier to entry for breaking things, or breaking into things.

All can be true.

So what should you do

No, you do not need to throw your robot vacuum into Acid Canyon and return to sweeping like a Victorian orphan with the black lung.

But this is a good reminder of the basics:

• Keep devices updated.
• Use strong passwords.
• Limit what devices can access your network.
• Think carefully before adding microphones and cameras to every room.
• Smart homes are convenient. They are also tiny data centers filled with sensors.

And sometimes, if the cloud hiccups, your vacuum may briefly become part of an international robot surveillance network, and strangers just might get a glimpse into your life.

Sleep tight and don’t let the robots bite…

Editor’s note: Rebecca Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.