Home maid robots can be hacked to attack homeowners

The prospect of robot help in the home market is still far away, but researchers have warned of the possibility that they might be hacked to do things against the host's will.

According to TheVerge, researchers from the network security company IOActive (based in Seattle, USA) have demonstrated that hackers can completely take control of a large number of robots that are currently popular in the world. , including Pepper - a humanoid house maid robot made by Japan's SoftBank group.

IOActive's report shows that robots can be hacked and turned into reconnaissance machines, conveying host-related images and sounds to hackers, or can be manipulated to injure people. around. The video below shows the robot Alpha 2 - a product of a Chinese robot group UBTech - is hacked and "handled" a tomato with a screwdriver.

Hackers can completely take control of a large number of robots today.

Of course, a robot like Alpha 2 cannot cause any serious problems (for those who can walk). But in the future, the assisting robot will have the capabilities that we only see on film at the moment, not to mention that IOActive said that even " big terrorist " industrial robots can't. get rid of being hacked.

Specifically, in addition to hacking Pepper, Alpha, and Nao (another SoftBank robot), researchers have successfully hacked industrial robot arms manufactured by Universal Robotics Corporation. Initially, these machine arms were designed to work with people according to high safety standards, but after being hacked, safety standards were installed in them "as if they never existed. ".

It is known that with current technology, robotic hacking requires hackers to access the same network with the robot, or can contact it directly. And if a robot has been manipulated, this is an extremely serious problem, because according to IOActive, the Universal Robotics robots in particular and many others are generally strong enough to "just run at a decent speed." low can also create a force to break human skull "!

The above study does not surprise people, but it proves that we are too "neglected" in security. Last year, an "army" of IoT (Internet of Things) devices including cameras, light bulbs, heat meters . was hacked and controlled as a botnet, causing the Internet to suffer from a phen staggered. Imagine if you could replace the simple objects like this with a real robotic team, equipped with a screwdriver, what could be causing an uproar?