Will your robot vacuum steal your Bitcoin?
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Will your robot vacuum steal your Bitcoin?
The robot vacuum cleaner is watching you.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Felix Ng
Translation: TechFlow
Smart robotic vacuum cleaners and other smart home devices can easily be hacked to record your password entries or seed phrases.
Imagine waking up one morning to find your vacuum cleaner out of control, your refrigerator demanding ransom, and your cryptocurrency and bank accounts completely drained.
This isn't a scene from Stephen King's 1986 horror film "Maximum Overdrive," where a rogue comet triggers a global machine killing spree.
Rather, it's a real-world risk that could result from hackers infiltrating your computer through smart devices in your home. With the global number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices expected to reach 18.8 billion and an average of about 820,000 IoT attacks occurring daily, this scenario is becoming increasingly plausible.
"Insecure IoT devices—such as routers—can serve as entry points into a home network," Tao Pan, a researcher at blockchain security firm Beosin, said in an interview.
As of 2023, the average American household owns 21 connected devices, and one-third of smart home device consumers have experienced data breaches or fraud within the past 12 months.
"Once compromised, attackers can move laterally to access connected devices—including computers or phones used for cryptocurrency transactions—and capture login credentials between devices and exchanges. This is especially dangerous for users who use APIs for cryptocurrency trading," he added.
So, what exactly can hackers steal from your home, and what damage can they cause?
Magazine has compiled some of the strangest hacking incidents over recent years, including a case where door sensors were hacked to mine cryptocurrency. We've also gathered practical advice on securing your data and cryptocurrency.
Hacking the Coffee Machine
In 2019, Martin Hron, a researcher at cybersecurity firm Avast, demonstrated how easily hackers can gain access to home networks and their devices.
He chose a simple target: remotely hacking his own coffee machine.
Hron explained that like most smart devices, the coffee machine used default settings and connected to Wi-Fi without requiring a password, making it easy to upload malicious code onto the machine.
"Many IoT devices initially connect to the home network via their own Wi-Fi network, which exists solely for device setup. Ideally, consumers would immediately secure this Wi-Fi network with a password," Hron explained.
"But many devices ship without any password protection on this Wi-Fi network, and many consumers don’t set one either," he added.
Original video link: Click here
"I can do whatever I want because I can replace the firmware—the software operating the coffee machine. And I can replace it with anything I choose. I can add functions, remove functions, and bypass built-in security measures. So, I can do absolutely anything," he said in a video released by Avast.
In his demonstration, Hron displayed a ransom note on the coffee machine, locking the device until a ransom was paid.
You can choose to turn off the device, but that means you’ll never have coffee again
(Avast/YouTube)
However, beyond displaying ransom notes, the coffee machine could be used for more malicious actions—such as turning on heaters to create fire hazards or spraying boiling water to threaten victims.
Even more frighteningly, it could quietly serve as a gateway into the entire network, allowing hackers to monitor your banking information, emails, or even your crypto seed phrases.
Hacking the Casino Fish Tank
One of the most famous cases occurred in 2017, when hackers breached a connected fish tank in the lobby of a Las Vegas casino and exfiltrated 10GB of data.
The fish tank was equipped with sensors regulating temperature, feeding, and cleaning, all linked to a computer on the casino’s network. Hackers used the fish tank to access other parts of the network and sent the stolen data to a remote server in Finland.
The fish tank might look something like this
(Muhammad Ayan Butt/ Unsplash)
Despite the casino having standard firewalls and antivirus software, the attack succeeded. Fortunately, it was quickly detected and contained.
Nicole Eagan, CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, told the BBC at the time: "We shut it down immediately, so no damage was done." She also added that the growing number of internet-connected devices means "it's a hacker’s paradise out there."
Door Sensors Secretly Mining Crypto
In 2020, in offices around the world shut down due to the pandemic, cybersecurity firm Darktrace discovered a covert cryptocurrency mining operation—hackers had exploited servers controlling biometric office access systems to mine cryptocurrency illegally.
The breach was flagged when the server downloaded a suspicious executable file from an external IP address that had never previously appeared on the network. Subsequently, the server made repeated connections to external endpoints associated with Monero, a privacy-focused cryptocurrency mining pool.
This type of attack is known as "cryptojacking". In 2023, Microsoft’s threat intelligence team discovered more such attacks, with hackers targeting Linux systems and internet-connected smart devices.
Microsoft found that attackers typically initiate these attacks by brute-forcing access to internet-facing Linux and IoT devices. Once inside the network, they install backdoors, then download and run cryptocurrency mining malware. This not only leads to skyrocketing electricity bills but also sends all mining profits directly to the hacker’s wallet.
Cryptojacking cases continue to emerge, with one recent example involving cryptojacking code embedded in fake 404 HTML pages.
Hacking Smart Devices: Taking Down the Power Grid
More alarmingly, security researchers at Princeton University proposed a hypothetical scenario: if hackers could take control of enough high-power devices—like 210,000 air conditioners—and switch them on simultaneously, it could trigger a blackout affecting as many people as live in California—approximately 38 million.
(Unsplash)
These devices would need to be concentrated in one section of the power grid and turned on simultaneously, causing certain power lines to become overloaded. This could damage or trip protective relays on those lines, shutting them down. The load would then shift to remaining lines, further stressing the grid and potentially triggering a cascading failure.
However, this scenario requires precise malicious timing, as normal grid fluctuations are common during extreme weather events like heatwaves.
Your Robotic Vacuum Is Watching You
Last year, robotic vacuums across multiple U.S. locations suddenly started activating on their own. It turned out hackers had discovered a critical security flaw in Ecovacs, a Chinese-made robotic vacuum.
Reports indicated hackers could remotely control these devices to frighten pets, shout obscenities through built-in speakers, and even use internal cameras to spy on users’ homes.
An image captured in real-time from a hacked Ecovacs robot vacuum
(ABC News)
"A serious problem with IoT devices is that many manufacturers still pay insufficient attention to security," said cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
Clearly, if hackers obtain video footage of you entering passwords or recording seed phrases, the consequences could be catastrophic.
How to Protect Yourself From Smart Device Hacks?
Look around—almost every device in your home may be connected to the internet: robotic vacuums, digital photo frames, doorbell cameras. So how can you protect your Bitcoin?
One option is to follow the approach of professional hacker Joe Grand: avoid using any smart devices altogether.
"My phone is the smartest device in my house, but even then, I only use it reluctantly—for navigation and communicating with family," he once told Magazine. "But smart devices? Absolutely not."
Avast’s Hron says the best practice is to ensure smart devices are password-protected and avoid using default settings.
Other experts recommend using a separate guest network for IoT devices—especially those that don’t need to share a network with computers and phones—disconnecting devices when not in use, and keeping software up to date.
In addition, there’s a paid internet search engine called Shodan that can help users identify their connected devices and potential vulnerabilities.
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