When Your Robot Catches a Virus

So, you got the cool new Android Model XYZ (“Robby”) for your birthday – the envy of everyone on the block, including the geeky hacker kid in his mom’s basement down the road (“Gary”).

And then the next morning you wake up to find Robby has chopped your dog to pieces and fed him to the cat.

Turns out Gary simply hacked into your fancy Android’s software, like he regularly does to other computers … and reprogrammed Gary to perform some malicious deeds.

Don’t think it’s possible? Think again.

In a 2009 published paper, University of Washington researchers found that robotics security is mostly an afterthought, and it was very easy to compromise (some) robots, with resulting damage.

They found several vulnerabilities in the robots they studied, including getting wirelessly hacked, and being able to get controlled over the internet, thus turning the robot into a remote-controlled spy. Their conclusion: “… someone might be able to drive your robot around your home, look around the house, listen in on conversations, and knock over small objects.”

And that was last year, studying robots from 2008! Just think what damage some of the latest humanoid robots could cause if hacked like this.

Anyone say, robot firewall?