this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2025
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Manufacturer issues remote kill command to disable smart vacuum after engineer blocks it from collecting data — user revives it with custom hardware and Python scripts to run offline (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 1 day ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
73 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] elvith@feddit.org 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Having not read the article: “Let’s apply Hanlon’s Razor: Oh, probably it just collects the data locally and caches it until the vendor’s servers are reachable. After a while the data partition was full and it stopped working as this case was never deemed possible when this was developed.”

Having read that the kill command was logged and he found it in the logs: “ok, there are no technical details, so there might still be a misunderstanding, but that’s not what I expected!”

[–] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 2 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Why talk if you don't know what you're talking about? If you didn't read the article whatever you say is irrelevant.

[–] zergtoshi@lemmy.world 1 points 20 hours ago

Why talk if you haven't read the comment you replied to until the end?