Wants to control vacuum cleaner with DualSense, but discovers a huge flaw
The security of thousands of devices compromised by chance
The story we are about to tell you is incredible, but it perfectly illustrates the dangers inherent in having "smart" devices at home. The protagonist is Sammy Azdoufal, a computer engineer who, for fun, tried to control his DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner with a DualSense gamepad for PlayStation 5. He could never have imagined what would happen next.
Violating thousands of devices, by chance
The story is reported by The Verge: Azdoufal turned to Claude Code's artificial intelligence to perform a reverse engineering operation on DJI's security protocols, in order to write code that would allow him to maneuver the vacuum cleaner with the DualSense. However, the program written by the AI communicated with the company's servers and... received access to thousands of other devices.
Playstation 5 Dualsense - Sterling Silver
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That's right: Azdoufal suddenly found himself able to control as many as 6,700 appliances, spread across 24 countries! All without even trying to violate the servers, in fact, without even wanting to. The computer engineer thus accidentally discovered a security flaw that allowed him to access very sensitive data such as camera footage from the devices, floor plans of the affected homes, and their approximate location.
A story without a happy ending?
Fortunately, this absurd inconvenience happened to an honest person, who immediately contacted the manufacturer. The company closed the flaw, preventing access to the system. However, the reported vulnerabilities of the DJI Romo models have not yet been fully resolved; they will only be in the coming weeks. But the real, unsettling question is to think about how many potential DJI Romo devices we have around the house…
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