Hacked robot vacuums hurl racial slurs at shocked owners, who react with ‘fear, disgust’

These vacuums had no filter.

American homeowners were shocked when their Chinese-made robot vacuum cleaners were hijacked and repossessed to bombard them with racial slurs.

The racist attack by hackers affected Ecovacs Deebot X2s – a brand that is manufactured in China – in several US cities, according to ABC News Australia.

Minnesota attorney Daniel Swenson said he was watching TV in May when his robot vacuum started making sounds that at first “sounded like a broken radio signal or something,” he told the media.

“You could hear snippets of maybe a voice,” recalled the plaintiff, who discovered in the vac app that a stranger had commandeered the automated soot vacuum’s live camera and remote control function.

Initially attributing it to a glitch, Swenson reset his password, rebooted Deebot and sat down with his wife and 13-year-old son.

Then, like a horror movie, the cyber cleaner began to move and release a stream of filth.

Vac reportedly yelled “f–k” followed by the n-word over and over in front of the family, ABC reported.

While certainly offensive, Swenson said he’s ultimately grateful Deebot’s rant allowed him to quickly conclude there had been a violation.

The incident raised concerns about hackers secretly watching him and his family through the dirt terminator, which was located on the same floor as the master bathroom.

“Our younger kids shower in there,” Swenson said. “I just thought I’d catch my kids or even me, you know, not dressed.”

The Minnesotan then took the powder to the garage and never fired it up again.

Unfortunately, Swenson’s Deebot wasn’t the only unit that went rogue.

Around the same time, an Ecovacs bot in El Paso, Texas, started yelling racial epithets at its owner late at night until they pulled the plug.

Meanwhile, another corrupt model followed a Los Angeles family’s dog around their home like something out of a dystopian sci-fi thriller.

They should be thanking their lucky stars that their furry friend wasn’t captured by the droid, as was the case with another unfortunate dog who sought rescue from the police.

It is unclear how many devices were affected or who the perpetrators were; however, Swenson suspects his bullies may have been teenagers playing pranks, judging by the robot’s voice.

He complained to Ecovacs about the infiltration, prompting an investigation that found hackers likely bypassed Ecovacs’ security measures to commandeer the Deebots’ cameras, microphones and motion controls, ABC reported.

The weak link was a four-digit PIN that could only be verified by the app, and not by the server or bot, thus allowing anyone with technical expertise to bypass this protection.

An Ecovacs spokesman said the bug has since been fixed and promised to upgrade the X2 in November.

However, the breach illustrates how easy it can be for bad actors to obtain data in our technology-saturated society.

Two years ago, servers that control robots working in hospitals were found to have major gaps in security coding, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by cybercriminals.

Even devices designed to keep us safe aren’t necessarily safe.

In 2019, an Alabama man sued security camera company Ring after he claimed a mobster hijacked his device and taunted his children.