Ever been run over by a robot? I have — for science!

Why am I tempting fate? Don't do this at home. — Oh. Oh, yeah. No, that's not comfortable. That is not comfortable. — This is a Yarbo robot lawn mower, and it's got a big problem. Someone on the other side of the planet can hijack this robot, spy with its cameras, even run people over. And this isn't staged. I drove across the Silicon Valley to get a live demo. — Hey, Matt. I know we've only ever spoken once in real life, but is it okay if I come over and hack your robot lawn mower? — This is Matt. His Yarbo lawn mower leaked GPS data that led me straight to his door. And this is Andreas, the man who can control any Yarbo from the other side of the world. — I'm not at my house. I'm uh visiting a parent elsewhere. Andreas is in Germany. So, you're the only one physically there with the mower at the moment. — You heard him. I'm alone with the Arbo. Let's see what we can do. Andreas shows us he has a map of almost every Yarbo. He presses one button to run a script and a few moments later he can see me. — There he is. — Oh, there. There we go. Nice shot of you. Uh, — and then I can like pull out the joystick here and just drive away. — So, we're going to take over the lawn mower right now. It's already running a job. It's already mowing this grass. And now, go ahead, Andreas. — Okay, let me start. It will take a second, but I will start requesting the control. — Okay, it's powered down and it's now under the control of somebody halfway across the world. — Forward and right and right and reverse. — We can just run away with this robot. — The hack appears to disable its obstacle avoidance sensors, too. It's — about to go into a big bundle of sticks. Uh, yep. No, that may leave a couple scratches. So, of course, I had to see if it would hit people. It's a good thing its blades are small. Matt, a retired network architect, thinks this should be a wakeup call for companies like Yarbo. — Manufacturers, product vendors, really cannot think of security as an afterthe-ffect bolt-on. It needs to be something that from the product development cycle day one needs to be in the plan and carefully thought of before you put it out in market. that it's much better to think about this going into the product development than to have it revealed once it's in the hands of consumers because this really is an embarrassment for them. — You can read more in my full story at theverge. com.