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Cake day: June 9th, 2024

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  • Not to fear! Here is the relevant part so the next person coming by doesn’t have to read the article:

    deep in the logs of his non-functioning smart vacuum, he found a command with a timestamp that matched exactly the time the gadget stopped working. This was clearly a kill command, and after he reversed it and rebooted the appliance, it roared back to life.

    a smart vacuum#039;s components and sensors

    (Image credit: Harishankar)

    So, why did the A11 work at the service center but refuse to run in his home? The technicians would reset the firmware on the smart vacuum, thus removing the kill code, and then connect it to an open network, making it run normally. But once it connected again to the network that had its telemetry servers blocked, it was bricked remotely because it couldn’t communicate with the manufacturer’s servers. Since he blocked the appliance’s data collection capabilities, its maker decided to just kill it altogether. "Someone—or something—had remotely issued a kill command,” says Harishankar. “Whether it was intentional punishment or automated enforcement of ‘compliance,’ the result was the same: a consumer device had turned on its owner.”