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Robot vacuums can be used by hackers to ‘spy’ on conversations, Singapore researchers say
- The ‘LidarPhone’ attack can take advantage of the device’s built-in sensor to gather potentially sensitive data, NUS computer scientists discovered
- To prevent misuse, the team advised owners not to connect their robot vacuums to the internet
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Your robot vacuum cleaner could be picking up private conversations along with the dust and dirt in your home.
Computer scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have shown how a common robot vacuum cleaner and its built-in light detection and ranging (Lidar) sensor could be used to “spy” on private conversations, the university said on Monday.
The method, called LidarPhone, repurposes the Lidar sensor that a robot vacuum cleaner normally uses for navigating around a home into a laser-based microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations.
The research team, led by Assistant Professor Jun Han and his doctoral student Sriram Sami, managed to recover speech data with “high accuracy”, NUS said.
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“The proliferation of smart devices – including smart speakers and smart security cameras – has increased the avenues for hackers to snoop on our private moments,” said Mr Sami.
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