Hackers Can Spy On You With Nothing But a Vacuum Cleaner

Being spied on is the sort of thing that pretty much every single person out there is going to be at the very least somewhat concerned about. Bad hackers are a big problem in our modern day and age, and they prevent people from feeling truly secure while using any kind of device that could help them get things done. As time has gone by, more and more everyday objects that are connected to the Internet of Things are ending up getting hacked, and one of the first examples of this sort of thing that we ended up seeing was a light bulb being hacked.

The latest example of a household item getting hacked is a vacuum cleaner, and the hackers that managed to perform this illicit access to the cleaning appliance did so using LiDAR technology, which is a bit like radar except it uses lasers. This is a piece of tech that is currently included in the new iPhones that Apple has just ended up releasing recently. You might think that a vacuum cleaner getting hacked is no big deal but the truth of the situation is that hackers can use it to actively spy on you even though vacuum cleaners don’t use any kind of microphones.

LiDAR sensors are used to help objects navigate more easily, something that is often necessary for various kinds of automated vacuum cleaners that might be out there. This is an example of hackers not trying to hack vulnerabilities but rather using the strengths of a device for purposes that said strengths may not initially have been intended for.

This sort of thing is particularly concerning when you consider that the new iPhones have this technology. While iPhones are generally a lot more secure than other devices that are out there, especially smart vacuum cleaners, the fact that hackers were able to use this tech would make some people wary of using it in the first place. Especially since other companies usually quickly adopt innovations that Apple may have made, which means that LiDAR might soon become commonplace among the various smartphones of the world.



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