Slashdot Mirror
How Dangerous Could a Hacked Robot Possibly Be?
alphadogg writes "Researchers at the University of Washington think it's finally time to start paying some serious attention to the question of robot security. Not because they think robots are about to go all Terminator on us, but because the robots can already be used to spy on us and vandalize our homes. In a paper published Thursday the researchers took a close look at three test robots: the Erector Spykee, and WowWee's RoboSapien and Rovio. They found that security is pretty much an afterthought in the current crop of robotic devices. 'We were shocked at how easy it was to actually compromise some of these robots,' said Tadayoshi Kohno, a University of Washington assistant professor, who co-authored the paper."
No matter how "fixed" things are someone will always find a way to circumvent security.
They speak of "compromising" these robots as if user programmable devices are inherently bad. I don't want to see devices locked down into black box "no touch" state because of some fear mongering.
That said, it has always been the case with computers (and robots are just computers with moving appendages) that if a hacker has physical access to the device, you're basically screwed anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The hacked robot is as dangerous as the person who hacked it.
See Isaac Asimov for the exact quote, but it basically says robots may not harm humans. Because the law is encoded *in the hardware* there's no way that it can be altered.
Very noble, very pure, very useless when your robot doesn't have any intelligence and just executes commands blindly.
I'm more concerned about someone hacking a Predator or Reaper.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
See Isaac Asimov for the exact quote, but it basically says robots may not harm humans. Because the law is encoded *in the hardware* there's no way that it can be altered.
Except that pretty well all of Asimovs stories were about how the 3 laws could be subverted by finding complex interactions that were not and could not be covered by the application of those simplistic laws
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
...for when the metal ones come for you, and they will.
Ugh. I feel the need to clarify, before the shouts from the peanut gallery. Yes, some robots have computer vision and are not 'blind', yes some robots can be well programmed and very smart, but that's still not the same thing as a true reasoning intelligence. Robots are only as good as their software and, if their programming has been corrupted, there is nothing you can do to get around that.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
I half agree with you; user-programmable devices are very useful, and easily tailored to efficiently perform specific tasks.
The crux of the argument, though, is "which user is giving the instructions?" Long ago on /. I made a comment differentiating security vs. transparency in government. This is much the same thing.
On the one hand, you (and a lot of people) want the device to be as programmable, flexible, and useful as possible. That means it must be able to do a lot of things. On the other hand, people might want to use such devices for nefarious, invasive purposes like spying, theft, vandalism, etc.
The two are not mutually exclusive, but remember:
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
They want you to play with them and make them do cool things. They don't necessarily want other people to drive up outside your house and use the robots' cameras and microphones to spy on you over WiFi. The problem is that the features that enable the first aren't secured, and therefore they can also be used to do the second.
It always amuses me when people worry about robots going wrong or turning on us, or being used by The Bad Guys of the Week to do us harm. I know a lot of very smart people who are involved in robotics research, and they will tell you that making robots do anything is hard. Making robots do something with surreptitiously poisoned programming would be even harder. Seriously,
if you're smart enough to remotely modify a robot's code to do something usefully nefarious, you're smart enough to sell a usefully nefarious to the government for megadollars.
There's a lot more money to be made will legitimate killbots. It might be nice to protect robots from script kiddies who just want to throw a spanner in the works but until robots are ubiquitous enough that domestic cybernetic terrorism becomes attractive (ie, doing it for the lulz) I don't think we need to be overly worried now.
That said, now -is- the time to be thinking about these things so that we're ready before we get to that point. Thinking, but not worried.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Did we really need to research this, we know the answer... VERY! Of course, this depends on the robot of course.
Robot A is tasked with going into a nuclear reactor and removing spent fuel rods. If Robot A is hacked and re-programmed to smash the shit out of the reactor, this might be dangerous.
Robot B is tasked with preventing people from entering into an access point in a secure building by 'restraining' them. If Robto B is hacked and re-programmed to 'hack' the people at random then this might be dangerous.
Hacking a roomba to spell your name in the carpet is not dangerous... It is all about what the level of responsibility of the robot is. It is funny that we needed research on this.
For example, the story about robots who prevented humans from coming to harm through inefficient human governance. Since they could not, through inaction, allow humans to harm themselves, they replaced the human government with robot governors.
They, for the record, did not welcome their new robot overlords.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
GP isn't actually offtopic. This article is directly or indirectly about fear mongering. Pointing out that there are carnivorous child-eating lizards, but that they live on the other side of the planet, is ontopic for "Under the Bed Monster fears" because it's reality, and the more of it you connect to the less subject you will be to irrational fears.
Your post is similarly on topic, since the robots that we should seriously worry about are indeed well secured against hackers.
Spykee is too loud to "sneak" up on anyone, but despite this and the "hype phrasing" of the articles, we finally have robots that are capable of external abuse. Spykee could instruct a trusting child as to how to unlatch a gate and fall down the stairs. Rovio could wait patiently by the stairs and slide exactly under a falling foot at a critical moment. These things can be done today, over the Internet, from the other side of the world. While Usenet is still in operation, it's pretty clear that the police are not well equipped for catching telemurderers.
Now would seem a good time to consider the issue. If we're posting on /. we can probably set our WPA-Enterprise security and require ssh tunnelling to access our home networks. Less than 10% of the people buying these robots can say the same. The infantile geek attitude of "serves 'em right for not securing it" needs to be discarded.
We geeks of the world are a significant force in the robot-buying market. Without exception all my friends would ask me first if they were going to buy a robot. We should let the manufacturers know that we won't buy or recommend "hard to secure" bots for our homes. Robot makers are one group that would actually listen to us. And since the tools for doing it right are freely available (though cost money to integrate), it's not an unreasonable stretch for the manufacturers.
While it's obvious how computer-people make the world an incrementally better place, this is one places where taking on some principals could save real living breathing humans. Seems worthy of some effort.
Can we stop with this completely illogical fear-mongering? Hacked robots? Are you people insane?
When you say "robot", people think of the sort of mindless, strangely powerful, totally mystical automotons found in sci fi movies and television shows. People think cylons and centurions, not a couple of servos and some sensors.
Are hacked robots dangerous? No. Or at least they are no more dangerous in the "hacked" form than their unhacked form. My advice is to not build robots with energy-weapons for arms.
If the "robot" that builds your car gets "hacked" (and by this I mean the PC that has some hydraulics connected to it gets somehow "hacked"), unplug it.
Done.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.