A hacker ran me over with a robot lawn mower

"I can do whatever I want with all the bots. It's completely unsecured. By the time the mower touches my body, Makris has already proven his point: the $5,000 robot lawn mowers from Yarbo have such ridiculous security vulnerabilities that a foreign hacker can easily hijack a bladed gadget in the United States. And not just one. Thousands upon thousands of bladed Chinese robots at his beck and call."

"But these robots have blades - and hackers can use the robot's built-in commands to override its safety features. Even if you press that big red emergency stop button on the mower itself, a hacker can send another command to unlock it. And because the Yarbo is a full Linux computer, one with its own backdoor and where the root password is always the same, hackers could remotely reprogram it."

Security researcher Andreas Makris discovered severe security flaws in Yarbo robot lawn mowers that enable remote hijacking from anywhere globally. The $5,000 devices lack proper security protocols, allowing hackers to gain control of thousands of units simultaneously. Once compromised, hackers can override built-in safety mechanisms, including emergency stop buttons, and reprogram the robots since they run Linux with a static root password. The vulnerability extends across all Yarbo robots worldwide regardless of their configuration for grass, snow, or weed cutting. This represents a significant physical safety risk, as the bladed devices could be weaponized or cause harm to users and bystanders.

Read at The Verge