When a software engineer in India decided to inspect his $300(₹26,347) smart vacuum, he didn’t expect to uncover a surveillance network transmitting his home’s data halfway across the world — or a company that could “kill” his device with a single line of code.
The Discovery: A Curious Engineer and a Silent Stream of Data
Forget your phone spying on you — perhaps it’s your vacuum you should really worry about.
In a detailed post on his blog Small World, computer programmer and electronics enthusiast Harishankar Narayanan described how an ordinary household gadget — his iLife A11 smart vacuum — turned into an unexpected digital informant.
After letting the vacuum run for a year, Narayanan decided to monitor its network traffic “out of good paranoia.” Within minutes, he saw what he called a “steady stream” of data leaving his home, bound for servers “halfway across the world.” The machine was transmitting logs, telemetry, and other information he had never consented to share.
His first mistake, Narayanan later wrote, was trying to stop it.
The Retaliation: A Device That Turned on Its Owner
When Narayanan blocked the device’s outbound data, it kept functioning for a few days before suddenly refusing to start. Assuming a fault, he sent it for repair. The service center returned it, saying it worked fine. It did — for a few days — until it “died again.” This cycle repeated several times, until the company refused further repairs, claiming the vacuum was out of warranty.
“Just like that, my $300 smart vacuum transformed into a paperweight,” he wrote.
Intrigued and suspicious, Narayanan began to reverse-engineer the device. What he found was chilling: the Android Debug Bridge, a developer tool for installing and debugging apps, was left “wide open.” This meant anyone — including the manufacturer — could access the device remotely.
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The Kill Command: When a Company Controls Your Hardware
Through trial and error, Narayanan gained full root access. “No hacks, no exploits. Just plug and play,” he recalled. Inside the system, he discovered the vacuum ran Google Cartographer, an open-source mapping tool that created a 3D model of his home and transmitted it to company servers.
Then came the real revelation: a “kill command” — a line of code sent from the company to the device at the precise moment it had shut down.
“Someone — or something — had remotely issued a kill command,” he wrote. When Narayanan reversed the code and rebooted the vacuum, it came back to life instantly.
In his words:
“They hadn’t merely incorporated a remote-control feature. They had used it to permanently disable my device.”
The Bigger Picture: Surveillance by Design
Narayanan’s findings raise broader alarms about the hidden powers embedded in everyday “smart” devices. He warned that “dozens of smart vacuums” and countless other home gadgets — from cameras to microphones — are built on similar architectures.
“Our homes are filled with sensors connected to companies we barely know,” he wrote. “All capable of being weaponized with a single line of code.”
Whether the company’s actions were an intentional punishment for blocking data collection or an automated compliance response, the outcome was the same: a consumer device turned against its owner.
Narayanan’s experience stands as a stark reminder — sometimes the biggest vulnerability in your home isn’t online, but quietly cleaning your floors.
