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Someone gained access to Ecovacs Deebot X2 Omni<\/a> robotic vacuums across several US cities earlier this year and used them to chase pets and yell racist slurs at their owners, reported ABC News<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in Australia this week. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The outlet spoke with multiple Deebot X2 owners who say their Deebot X2s had been hacked in May, including Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson, who said he was watching TV with his family when a noise \u201clike a broken-up radio signal or something\u201d started coming from the robot\u2019s speaker. He said after he reset his password and rebooted the robot, it began again, only this time the sound was clearly a voice \u2014 he guessed a teenager\u2019s \u2014 yelling slurs. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n ABC News<\/em> lists other, similar accounts from owners in El Paso and Los Angeles, the latter of which involved someone using a Deebot to antagonize a dog, yelling at and chasing it. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Ecovacs told the outlet in a statement<\/a> that it had \u201cidentified a credential stuffing event\u201d and blocked the IP address it originated from. The company said it \u201cfound no evidence\u201d that usernames and passwords were collected by the attacker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Researchers demonstrated a flaw<\/a> last year that let them bypass the Deebot X2\u2019s PIN entry to gain access to the vacuum. Ecovacs says in its statement that it has resolved that, and that it also plans to \u201cfurther enhance security\u201d with an update in November. It\u2019s not clear whether that would correct a Bluetooth vulnerability that ABC News<\/em> exploited for a report earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cloud-connected smart home devices have led to stories like this for years. Sometimes it\u2019s the result of hacks<\/a>, others simply compromised credentials<\/a>. Sometimes, it\u2019s bad software showing you another owner\u2019s camera feed<\/a>, as a little treat. Issues like these can feel inevitable when so many smart home devices require a persistent internet connection to function, especially for those companies that don\u2019t offer easy ways<\/a> to report security vulnerabilities. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n