I DO NOT TRUST THE INTERNET OF THINGS: Popular Robots are Dangerously Easy to Hack, Cybersecurity Firm Says.

Universal Robots’s devices are designed to work directly alongside humans without being confined to a cage for safety, as with many other industrial models. But IOActive was able to remotely hack the software that controls the robot and disable key safety features. This could result in them being programmed to injure the humans around them.

This is particularly worrying, IOActive said, because these machines are large enough and have enough power that “even running at low speeds, their force is more than sufficient to cause a skull fracture.”

With the robots intended for home use – SoftBank’s Pepper and NAO – IOActive found that cyberattackers could use them to record audio and video and secretly transmit this data to an external server.

Anything with a recording or capture device and an internet connection is a potential spy.