Great - my vacuum is eavesdropping on me

Home Robots and Malware Attacks

OK - I can't tell if this is just an example of academics clever enough to be 'first' to get a publication out or if I should be really worried. A bit from ASEE apparently fed from MSNBC wants me to worry about my Roomba getting hacked and sent to spy on me at home. We have a pool 'robot' cleaner that rolls around on the bottom of the pool sucking up leaves and stuff that have fallen in an hour a day. Should I be concerned that my swimming might be monitored as well?

Of course anything that has a chip to execute instructions can be hacked. But this sounds like a cross between iRobot, Dyson and Blade Runner. I think I'll ignore this for now.

Home Robots Could Be Compromised, Study Warns.

MSNBC (11/6, Mapes) reports, "In a study presented at the recent International Conference on Ubiquitous

Computing," researchers from the computer science and engineering department at the University of Washington "envisioned a handful of scenarios consumers could potentially encounter with various household robots, including psychological attacks...robot vandalism and robot spying." According to some estimates, "this year the personal robotics market will reach $1.16 billion globally, and...the market will more than quadruple by 2015, when worldwide shipments will be $5.26 billion." Tamara Denning, a doctoral student at the University of Washington and lead author of the study, A Spotlight on Security and Privacy Risks with Future Household Robots: Attacks and Lessons, said "We're not trying to give people ideas or scare them, but we are trying to raise awareness. It's very similar to computer security, the way that users of desktop computers have to worry about spam and malware.

-- pdl --