Free Republic

Robot vacuums in multiple US cities were hacked in the space of a few days, with the attacker physically controlling them and yelling obscenities through their onboard speakers. The affected robots were all Chinese-made Ecovacs Deebot X2s — the exact model that the ABC was able to hack into as proof of a critical security flaw. Minnesota lawyer Daniel Swenson was watching TV when his robot started to malfunction. "It sounded like a broken-up radio signal or something," he told the ABC. "You could hear snippets of maybe a voice." Through the Ecovacs app, he saw that a stranger was...

The U.S. government has quietly gone ahead and formed several special security organizations for policing the internet. Because there is such a (trained, not to mention talented) manpower shortage right now (and in the foreseeable future), this was done on the cheap. An effective force could not be recruited, even if everyone agreed to accept government pay levels, because of the huge expense. One solution that was suggested even before September 11, 2001, and eventually caught on, was to organize and reward the pro bono cybersecurity efforts that have been going on for some time. A lot of talented whitehats...