French programmer says accidentally hacked 7,000 robot vacuums

Tokyo: All he wanted was to move his robot vacuum cleaner around with a PlayStation controller. But programmer Sammy Azdoufal claims he unwittingly ga...

Tokyo: All he wanted was to move his robot vacuum cleaner around with a PlayStation controller. But programmer Sammy Azdoufal claims he unwittingly gained remote access to 7,000 other devices.

His experience has drawn attention to the potential security risks of smart home gadgets, with Chinese manufacturer DJI saying it had fixed a "vulnerability" detected in its software.

The French tech worker, based in Barcelona, ​​told AFP on a phone call this week that he had tried to customise his flashy DJI Romo vacuum cleaner out of curiosity.

“They have an app linked to the vacuum. So I tried to understand what the app was sending to the robot when I'm moving the robot,” Azdoufal said.

After linking up the gaming controller, he decided he wanted to make the vacuum cleaner sound like it was crying when low on battery.