The Day My Smart Vacuum Turned Against Me
Would you allow a stranger to drive a camera-equipped computer around your living room? You might have already done so without even realizing it.The Beginning: A Curious ExperimentIt all started innocently enough. I had recently bought an iLife A11 smart vacuum—a sleek, affordable, and technologically advanced robot promising effortless cleaning and intelligent navigation. As a curious engineer, I was fascinated by its workings. After leaving it to operate for the entire year, my curiosity got the better of me.I’m a bit paranoid—the good kind of paranoid. So, I decided to monitor its network traffic, as I would with any so-called smart device.Within minutes, I noticed a steady stream of packets being sent to servers located halfway across the world. My robot vacuum was constantly…
