shame people who might use these toys. Quite the opposite: by
raising the issue, they wanted to ensure that people could do what
they wanted without fear of being hacked, and in doing so pressure
the industry to improve standards.
It’s not just sex toys that are at risk. Lomas has found that the
Bluetooth trick also worked on his father’s hearing aids. And some
targets are even larger: computer scientists at Brown University
discovered that it was possible to gain access to research robots,
due to a loophole in a popular robotics operating system. In early
2018, the team managed to take control of a machine at the
University of Washington (with the owners’ permission). They also
found threats closer to home. Two of their own robots – an industrial
helper and a drone – were accessible to outsiders. ‘Neither was
intentionally made available on the public Internet,’ they noted, ‘and
both have the potential to cause physical harm if used
inappropriately.’ Although the researchers focused on university-
based robots, they warned that similar problems could affect
machines elsewhere. ‘As robots move out of the lab and into
industrial and home settings, the number of units that could be
subverted is bound to increase manifold.’[25]
The internet of things is creating new connections across different
aspects of our lives. But in many cases, we may not realise exactly
where these connections lead. This hidden network became
apparent at lunchtime on 28 February 2017, when several people
with internet-connected homes noticed that they couldn’t turn on
their lights. Or turn off their ovens. Or get into their garages.
The glitch was soon traced to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the
company’s cloud computing subsidiary. When a person hits the
switch to turn on a smart light bulb, it will typically notify a cloud-
based server – such as AWS – potentially located thousands of
miles away. This server will then send a signal back to the bulb to
turn it on. That February lunchtime, however, some of the AWS
servers had briefly gone offline. With the server down, a large
number of household devices had stopped responding.[26]