The smart vacuum cleaner was remotely bricked for not collecting data.

An engineer got curious about how his iLife A11 smart vacuum worked and monitored the network traffic coming from the device. That’s when he noticed it was constantly sending logs and telemetry data to the manufacturer — something he hadn’t consented to. The user, Harishankar, decided to block the telemetry servers’ IP addresses on his network, while keeping the firmware and OTA servers open. While his smart gadget worked for a while, it just refused to turn on soon after. After a lengthy investigation, he discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.

  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    153·
    13 hours ago

    Had a kill command actually been sent, or does the device just not work without a remote server talking to it every so often?

    Because the second one is probably worse from a “what if this company goes bust” standpoint.

    • cøre@leminal.spaceEnglish
      6·
      11 hours ago

      Man itd be great if there was an answer to this. Maybe in an article somewhere. Guess we’ll never know.

      • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        8 hours ago

        Not to fear! Here is the relevant part so the next person coming by doesn’t have to read the article:

        deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

        a smart vacuum#039;s components and sensors

        (Image credit: Harishankar)

        So, why did the A11 work at the service center but refuse to run in his home? The technicians would reset the firmware on the smart vacuum, thus removing the kill code, and then connect it to an open network, making it run normally. But once it connected again to the network that had its telemetry servers blocked, it was bricked remotely because it couldn’t communicate with the manufacturer’s servers. Since he blocked the appliance’s data collection capabilities, its maker decided to just kill it altogether. "Someone—or something—had remotely issued a kill command,” says Harishankar. “Whether it was intentional punishment or automated enforcement of ‘compliance,’ the result was the same: a consumer device had turned on its owner.”

        • 0x0@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          7 hours ago

          it was bricked remotely because it couldn’t communicate with the manufacturer’s servers.

          That bit seems inaccurate… if it couldn’t communicate it wasn’t bricked remotely… it was more like digital seppuku.

          • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            0·
            6 hours ago

            Earlier in the article he says that he only disabled some of the network connections but he left open the ones for firmware updates and stuff so to me it’s not impossible that it was able to receive remote commands although I would certainly want to see more technical details to satisfy my curiosity.

            The article says in words that it was a remote command. But again, we don’t have any details supporting that description. So maybe the journalist got it wrong.

            • 0x0@lemmy.zipEnglish
              0·
              6 hours ago

              I would certainly want to see more technical details

              Certainly. By default most home networks block incoming traffic but then again if the’s the tinkerer type his network will most likely not be default.

              • sem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                1·
                1 hour ago

                This is something I’ve never understood about firewalls. If the vacuum cleaner is uploading and downloading stuff from https://somecorpo.net/, what stops it from listening for remote commands on that same connwction?

    • Nalivai@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      13 hours ago

      Don’t worry, the quality of the modern hardware is so shitty, it will not outlive the company for long