Sammy Azdoufal claims he wasn’t trying to hack every robot vacuum in the world. He just wanted to remote control his brand-new DJI Romo vacuum with a PS5 gamepad, he tells The Verge, because it sounded fun.
Technology
The DJI Romo robovac had security so poor, this man remotely accessed thousands of them
But when his homegrown remote control app started talking to DJI’s servers, it wasn’t just one vacuum cleaner that replied. Roughly 7,000 of them, all around the world, began treating Azdoufal like their boss.
He could remotely control them, and look and listen through their live camera feeds, he tells me, saying he tested that out with a friend. He could watch them map out each room of a house, generating a complete 2D floor plan. He could use any robot’s IP address to find its rough location.
“I found my device was just one in an ocean of devices,” he says.
On Tuesday, when he showed me his level of access in a live demo, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Ten, hundreds, thousands of robots reporting for duty, each phoning home MQTT data packets every three seconds to say: their serial number, which rooms they’re cleaning, what they’ve seen, how far they’ve traveled, when they’re returning to the charger, and the obstacles they encountered along the way.
I watched each of these robots slowly pop into existence on a map of the world. Nine minutes after we began, Azdoufal’s laptop had already cataloged 6,700 DJI devices across 24 different countries and collected over 100,000 of their messages. If you add the company’s DJI Power portable power stations, which also phone home to these same servers, Azdoufal had access to over 10,000 devices.
When I say I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, I mean that literally. Azdoufal leads AI strategy at a vacation rental home company; when he told me he reverse engineered DJI’s protocols using Claude Code, I had to wonder whether AI was hallucinating these robots. So I asked my colleague Thomas Ricker, who just finished reviewing the DJI Romo, to pass us its serial number.
With nothing more than that 14-digit number, Azdoufal could not only pull up our robot, he could correctly see it was cleaning the living room and had 80 percent battery life remaining. Within minutes, I watched the robot generate and transmit an accurate floor plan of my colleague’s house, with the correct shape and size of each room, just by typing some digits into a laptop located in a different country.
Separately, Azdoufal pulled up his own DJI Romo’s live video feed, completely bypassing its security PIN, then walked into his living room and waved to the camera while I watched. He also says he shared a limited read-only version of his app with Gonzague Dambricourt, CTO at an IT consulting firm in France; Dambricourt tells me the app let him remotely watch his own DJI Romo’s camera feed before he even paired it.
Azdoufal was able to enable all of this without hacking into DJI’s servers, he claims. “I didn’t infringe any rules, I didn’t bypass, I didn’t crack, brute force, whatever.” He says he simply extracted his own DJI Romo’s private token — the key that tells DJI’s servers that you should have access to your own data — and those servers gave him the data of thousands of other people as well. He shows me that he can access DJI’s pre-production server, as well as the live servers for the US, China, and the EU.
Here’s the good news: On Tuesday, Azdoufal was not able to take our DJI Romo on a joyride through my colleague’s house, see through its camera, or listen through its microphone. DJI had already restricted that form of access after both Azdoufal and I told the company about the vulnerabilities.
And by Wednesday morning, Azdoufal’s scanner no longer had access to any robots, not even his own. It appears that DJI has plugged the gaping hole.
But this incident raises serious questions about DJI’s security and data practices. It will no doubt be used to help retroactively justify fears that led to the Chinese dronemaker getting largely forced out of the US. If Azdoufal could find these robots without even looking for them, will it protect them against people with intent to do harm? If Claude Code can spit out an app that lets you see into someone’s house, what keeps a DJI employee from doing so? And should a robot vacuum cleaner have a microphone? “It’s so weird to have a microphone on a freaking vacuum,” says Azdoufal.
It doesn’t help that when Azdoufal and The Verge contacted DJI about the issue, the company claimed it had fixed the vulnerability when it was actually only partially resolved.
“DJI can confirm the issue was resolved last week and remediation was already underway prior to public disclosure,” reads part of the original statement provided by DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong. We received that statement on Tuesday morning at 12:28PM ET — about half an hour before Azdoufal showed me thousands of robots, including our review unit, reporting for duty.
To be clear, it’s not surprising that a robot vacuum cleaner with a smartphone app would phone home to the cloud. For better or for worse, users currently expect those apps to work outside of their own homes. Unless you’ve built a tunnel into your own home network, that means relaying the data through cloud servers first.
But people who put a camera into their home expect that data to be protected, both in transit and once it reaches the server. Security professionals should know that — but as soon as Azdoufal connected to DJI’s MQTT servers, everything was visible in cleartext. If DJI has merely cut off one particular way into those servers, that may not be enough to protect them if hackers find another way in.
Unfortunately, DJI is far from the only smart home company that’s let people down on security. Hackers took over Ecovacs robot vacuums to chase pets and yell racist slurs in 2024. In 2025, South Korean government agencies reported that Dreame’s X50 Ultra had a flaw that could let hackers view its camera feed in real time, and that another Ecovacs and a Narwal robovac could let hackers view and steal photos from the devices. (Korea’s own Samsung and LG vacuums received high marks, and a Roborock did fine.)
It’s not just vacuums, of course. I still won’t buy a Wyze camera, despite its new security ideas, because that company tried to sweep a remote access vulnerability under the rug instead of warning its customers. I would find it hard to trust Anker’s Eufy after it lied to us about its security, too. But Anker came clean, and sunlight is a good disinfectant.
DJI is not being exceptionally transparent about what happened here, but it did answer almost all our questions. In a new statement to The Verge via spokesperson Daisy Kong, the company now admits “a backend permission validation issue” that could have theoretically let hackers see live video from its vacuums, and it admits that it didn’t fully patch that issue until after we confirmed that issues were still present.
Here’s that whole statement:
DJI identified a vulnerability affecting DJI Home through internal review in late January and initiated remediation immediately. The issue was addressed through two updates, with an initial patch deployed on February 8 and a follow-up update completed on February 10. The fix was deployed automatically, and no user action is required.
The vulnerability involved a backend permission validation issue affecting MQTT-based communication between the device and the server. While this issue created a theoretical potential for unauthorized access to live video of ROMO device, our investigation confirms that actual occurrences were extremely rare. Nearly all identified activity was linked to independent security researchers testing their own devices for reporting purposes, with only a handful of potential exceptions.
The first patch addressed this vulnerability but had not been applied universally across all service nodes. The second patch re-enabled and restarted the remaining service nodes. This has now been fully resolved, and there is no evidence of broader impact. This was not a transmission encryption issue. ROMO device-to-server communication was not transmitted in cleartext and has always been encrypted using TLS. Data associated with ROMO devices, such as those in Europe, is stored on U.S.-based AWS cloud infrastructure.
DJI maintains strong standards for data privacy and security and has established processes for identifying and addressing potential vulnerabilities. The company has invested in industry-standard encryption and operates a longstanding bug bounty program. We have reviewed the findings and recommendations shared by the independent security researchers who contacted us through that program as part of our standard post-remediation process. DJI will continue to implement additional security enhancements as part of its ongoing efforts.
Azdoufal says that even now, DJI hasn’t fixed all the vulnerabilities he’s found. One of them is the ability to view your own DJI Romo video stream without needing its security pin. Another one is so bad I won’t describe it until DJI has more time to fix it. DJI did not immediately promise to do so.
And both Azdoufal and security researcher Kevin Finisterre tell me it’s not enough for the Romo to send encrypted data to a US server, if anyone inside that server can easily read it afterward. “A server being based in the US in no way, shape, or form prevents .cn DJI employees from access,” Finisterre tells me. That seems evident, as Azdoufal lives in Barcelona and was able to see devices in entirely different regions.
“Once you’re an authenticated client on the MQTT broker, if there are no proper topic-level access controls (ACLs), you can subscribe to wildcard topics (e.g., #) and see all messages from all devices in plaintext at the application layer,” says Azdoufal. “TLS does nothing to prevent this — it only protects the pipe, not what’s inside the pipe from other authorized participants.”
When I tell Azdoufal that some may judge him for not giving DJI much time to resolve the issues before going public, he notes that he didn’t hack anything, didn’t expose sensitive data, and isn’t a security professional. He says he was simply livetweeting everything that happened while trying to control his robot with a PS5 gamepad.
“Yes, I don’t follow the rules, but people stick to the bug bounty program for money. I fucking don’t care, I just want this fixed,” he says. “Following the rules to the end would probably make this breach happen for a way longer time, I think.”
He doesn’t believe that DJI truly discovered these issues by itself back in January, and he’s annoyed the company only ever responded to him robotically in DMs on X, instead of answering his emails.
But he is happy about one thing: He can indeed control his Romo with a PlayStation or Xbox gamepad.
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If you’re looking for a relatively affordable way to cut down on cooling costs, Google’s Nest Thermostat can help. It’s packed with smart controls and energy-saving features, and right now it’s on sale in white for $79 ($50 off), which is its best price of the year, at Amazon.
The smart thermostat is quick to install and makes it easy to adjust your home’s temperature whether you’re relaxing in bed or on your way home thanks to the Google Home app. You can also create schedules and control it with your voice using Google Assistant, Alexa, or another Matter-compatible voice assistant.
Once it’s set up, the Nest Thermostat can automatically turn the temperature down when you’re away to help reduce unnecessary energy use, while Google’s Savings Finder feature suggests additional ways to save over time. It also monitors your HVAC system and can alert you if something doesn’t seem right, making it easier to stay on top of maintenance before small issues become bigger, more expensive ones. If you’re eligible, Nest Renew can also automatically shift some of your heating and cooling to times when electricity is cleaner or cheaper.
That said, this is Google’s entry-level model from 2020, so you do miss out on some of the premium features found on the latest Nest Learning Thermostat. Unlike the flagship version, it won’t learn your schedule automatically over time, for example, and lacks support for Nest Temperature Sensors that let you prioritize the temperature in a specific room. Even so, if all you want is an easy way to adjust your home’s temperature remotely and potentially lower your energy bills, the Nest Thermostat is still a solid investment at this price.
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The Justice Department recently charged 455 people in its annual National Health Care Fraud Takedown. The cases involve more than $6.5 billion in alleged false claims. More state Medicaid units took part than in any prior year. Ninety of the accused are doctors or other licensed medical professionals. The DOJ says prosecutors still must prove the charges in court.
Many schemes used other people’s medical identities. Prosecutors also added aggravated identity theft charges in cases across dozens of states. In one case, the co-owner of a Virginia mental health company allegedly paid homeless people with hotel stays. Prosecutors say the company used their Medicaid numbers, then billed Medicaid for crisis services the patients never got.
For the people whose numbers got used, the case file may eventually close. Their medical records may not be so easy to fix. Once someone else’s treatment shows up under your name, it can add wrong information to your chart. It can also use up insurance benefits you may need later. That is harder to undo than canceling a credit card.
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DR OZ WARNS MEDICARE SCAMMERS ARE STEALING BILLIONS — AND YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION COULD BE NEXT
Medical identity theft can put someone else’s claims, prescriptions or diagnoses into your health records, creating problems that can follow you into a doctor’s office. (iStock)
The identity thief’s treatment gets written into your file
Medical identity theft happens when someone uses your name, Social Security number (SSN), health insurance account number, or Medicare number to see a doctor, fill a prescription, buy medical equipment, or submit a claim, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
When care is billed under your name, the thief’s health information can blend into yours. The FTC warns that mixed records can affect the care you’re able to get and the benefits you are able to use. A blood type, a drug allergy, a diagnosis, or a prescription that belongs to a stranger can sit in the file a physician reads before treating you.
Data breaches can feed the market for medical identity theft
Hospitals and insurers hold the exact records that make the fraud work, and those records are stolen often. This does not mean every healthcare breach leads to fraud. However, it explains why your insurance number, Medicare number, SSN and medical records can become valuable long after a breach notice arrives.
This spring, NYC Health + Hospitals reported that an intruder had copied files that may have included health insurance information, medical information, biometric data, billing data and other personal information. The breach was later reported to affect roughly 1.8 million current and former patients and employees.
Once a name, SSN, insurance number, Medicare number or medical record reaches a criminal marketplace, it can be resold to operators who bill under someone else’s identity.
Treat your insurance card like a credit card
Your health insurance and Medicare numbers are what these operations need, so the FTC recommends guarding them the way you would a payment card.
- Keep enrollment forms, benefit statements, and prescription labels somewhere secure, and shred them before throwing them out.
- When a doctor’s office asks for your SSN, ask whether it can use another identifier or the last four digits instead.
- Be wary of anyone who calls, texts, or emails offering free braces, genetic tests, or medical supplies in exchange for your Medicare number; several of the schemes in the June takedown billed Medicare for exactly those items.
- If you are on Medicare, create or log in to your secure Medicare account and review your claims. You can also check your Medicare Summary Notice for services, supplies or equipment you do not recognize. If something looks wrong, call 1-800-MEDICARE.
HOSPICE FRAUD USES STOLEN IDENTITIES FOR FAKE PATIENTS
Experts urge patients to treat insurance cards like credit cards and quickly challenge unfamiliar medical bills, claims or benefits notices. (iStock)
Your credit report may never flag this fraud
Because a fraudulent medical claim runs through insurance and provider systems instead of a credit check, it skips the alerts most people rely on.
Here’s what the FTC says you should look out for:
- A bill or an Explanation of Benefits (EOB) statement for care you never received
- A call from a debt collector about a medical debt you do not owe
- A medical collection you do not recognize on your credit report
- A notice from your insurer that you have reached your benefit limit
- A Medicare Summary Notice that lists services, supplies or equipment you never received
What to do first if a medical claim looks wrong
If a bill, EOB or Medicare notice shows care you never received, move quickly and keep everything in writing.
1) Call your insurer or Medicare directly
Call your insurer or Medicare using the number on your card, not a number from a random text, email or voicemail.
2) Get the claim details
Ask for the provider name, date of service, claim number and service details.
3) Request the records in writing
Contact the provider in writing and request the medical or billing records tied to that claim.
4) Report the error
Report the error to your insurer’s fraud department.
5) File an identity theft report
File a report at IdentityTheft.gov if your medical identity was used. That gives you a recovery plan and documentation you may need if fraudulent bills or collections show up later.
6) Save every document
Keep copies of every bill, EOB, letter, portal message, police report and case number.
Correcting a medical file is slower than disputing a charge
Request your records from every provider, clinic, pharmacy, lab and insurer the thief may have used, then report each error in writing. Under HIPAA, a provider generally has 30 days to give you access to your records after a written request, with a possible 30-day extension.
Fixing the record itself can take longer. HHS says a covered provider or health plan usually has up to 60 days to act on a request to amend a medical record, with a possible 30-day extension in certain cases. If the provider or plan created the wrong information, it must amend inaccurate or incomplete information.
There’s one catch, though: a provider may refuse to release records that now contain a stranger’s information, citing that person’s privacy. If that happens, ask for the provider’s privacy officer or patient advocate. You can also file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights if you do not get your records or an explanation within the required window.
TEXAS DATA BREACH HITS 3M LICENSE CUSTOMERS
Stolen Medicare, Medicaid or insurance numbers can be used to bill for care, medical equipment or prescriptions patients never received. (kali9/Getty Images)
A credit freeze alone won’t stop a claim under your insurance
A freeze blocks new accounts, but it does nothing about a claim filed with your insurance number. Because medical identity theft can move without touching your credit file, monitoring where your personal information appears is the earliest way to act on it.
An identity theft protection service can monitor the dark web, data broker sites and people-search sites for exposed SSNs, driver’s license numbers, medical ID numbers and email addresses. It can also track all three credit bureaus for medical collections that may follow and flag public-record changes tied to your name.
If misuse happens, some services include fraud resolution support to help you request records, dispute fraudulent claims and work with providers, insurers and credit bureaus. Some plans also include identity theft insurance for eligible recovery costs.
No service can prevent every misuse of your medical identity. However, ongoing monitoring may flag exposed information before another person’s treatment reaches your records and your insurance.
See my tips and best picks on Best Identity Theft Protection at CyberGuy.com.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Medical identity theft hits in a place most of us rarely check: our health records. A stolen credit card can usually be canceled quickly. A stolen Medicare or insurance number can create fake claims, wrong diagnoses and benefit headaches that follow you long after the fraud case ends. I would not wait for a credit alert here. Check your EOBs, Medicare Summary Notices and insurer portals for visits, prescriptions or equipment you never received. Also, treat your insurance card like a payment card. Do not give the number to anyone who calls, texts or emails out of nowhere with a free offer. The most important thing is to act fast. Call your insurer or Medicare, ask for the claim details and request your medical records in writing. Then file at IdentityTheft.gov, so you have the paperwork you need if fraudulent bills or collections show up later.
Have you ever spotted a medical bill, insurance claim or EOB for care you never received? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.
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Meta might be the next company to make an always-on AI wearable. The company is working on prototype “super sensing” always-aware smart glasses that could continuously record audio and snap photos “every few seconds,” according to the Financial Times. The wearer could then ask Meta AI about the captured audio and images.
However, the images and audio might not be directly available to the user. Here’s how the FT describes one way the glasses could use the data:
In one proposed system, raw footage and audio would not be stored by Meta or made available to the user, several people said. Instead, the metadata from that audio and images would be extracted and uploaded to the server for Meta’s AI to query, which proponents argue would have fewer privacy implications.
But currently, Meta is planning for the LED recording indicator to remain off in “super sensing” mode, the FT reports. In a July 2025 whitepaper, the company said that it would reserve the LED indicator for “active capture” scenarios where the user is saving photos or videos, and leave it off during “AI Feature” use — such as scanning a menu — to avoid users becoming too used to the indicator. (If the indicator was on during the “super sensing” mode, it might also be harder to know when the glasses are actually recording video.)
Meta is also discussing if it would use the captured data for training its AI models. It may also bring the “super sensing” features to glasses it has already released, the FT says.
“While we don’t comment on internal prototypes, we’re committed to getting our glasses right because they need to be loved by both people wearing them and those around them,” Meta spokesperson Dave Arnold says in a statement to The Verge. Arnold also notes that “Our approach has been to develop new technologies that will help people throughout their day, with privacy built in from the ground up.”
Meta hasn’t been shy about some type of always-aware glasses being a possibility. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in the company’s Q1 2026 earnings call, said that he was “really excited to see the glasses evolve from being able to answer questions to being able to be a personal agent that’s with you all day long, helping you remember things and achieve your goals.” In a March blog post about new Ray-Ban Meta glasses, the company wrote that “with ongoing software updates, Meta AI on glasses will transition from something you have to prompt with a question each time, to a more continuous, in-the-moment assistant that can help throughout the day.”
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