Hackable Robot Lawn Mower Unlocks a New Nightmare

LoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCramming for finals is bad enough without the platform you use to do your schoolwork suddenly shutting down. Unfortunately for countless students across the US, that’s exactly what they faced on Thursday after Canvas went into “maintenance mode” following a ransomware attack on education tech firm Instructure. Hackers using the name ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, and experts say the chaos they caused shows how far these actors will go to extort their victims.

Did you know that Google Chrome includes an automatic download of the Gemini Nano AI model? If not, you wouldn’t be alone. People who use Google’s wildly popular browser realized this week that Gemini Nano has been taking up 4 GB of space on their desktops since 2024, sparking annoyance and concerns over privacy. Fortunately, you can disable the AI model—but not without losing some helpful security features. Obviously, you can also just download a different browser for free.

Researchers this week revealed that thousands of vibe coded apps were left exposed on the open internet, revealing sensitive corporate and personal data. The security failings are a reminder: Just because you can vibe code something doesn’t necessarily mean you should.

The Department of Homeland Security subpoenaed Google in an attempt to obtain the location data and account activity of a Canadian man who criticized US immigration enforcement tactics following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis early this year. The American Civil Liberties Union this week filed a complaint against DHS on behalf of the man, who has not visited the US in more than 10 years.

Scammers, low-level hackers, and other cybercriminals have joined the ranks of humanity yearning to be free of AI slop, according to new research. Meta, meanwhile, is sprucing up its age-verification tech after a study found that kids are tricking online age checks using simple techniques—including one child hero who circumvented online age verification by drawing on a fake mustache. Finally, we detailed Russia’s effort to create a local competitor to Starlink satellite internet service—with all the privacy and security concerns that entails.

And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

Most people hope that the 200-pound robot with blades in their backyard cannot be easily hacked. Unfortunately for the owners of Yarbo, a $5,000 lawn mower robot that can also work as a leaf blower, snowblower, and edger, that was not the case. The Verge reports that a security researcher found numerous vulnerabilities in the lawn bots that could allow hackers to remotely take over the machines (including their camera feeds,) as well as extract owners' email addresses, Wi-Fi passwords, and home locations.

After a Yarbo spokesperson told The Verge that the robots' “diagnostic environment is not publicly accessible,” the reporter and researcher demonstrated the security flaws and their potential consequences by nearly running over the reporter with a hijacked robot. The company has since reported that they are developing a fix to at least one of the flaws the researcher identified.

The Trump administration unveiled a new counterterrorism strategy, which President Donald Trump describes as a “return to common sense and Peace through Strength” in a foreword included in the document. The three biggest types of terror groups, according to the document, are cartels, Islamist terror groups, and “violent left wing extremists,” which the memo says includes anarchists and anti-fascists and have ideologies that are “anti-American” and “radically pro-transgender.”

The memo promises, "We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent."

Notably, during a congressional hearing last year, the operations director of the FBI's National Security Branch was unable to answer questions about how many people were in “Antifa,” where it was located, or other specifics.

Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency has launched some of the most brazen and destructive cyberattacks in history. While some of its operatives have been publicly named and hit with international sanctions, a consortium of journalists revealed this week how a special unit inside Bauman Moscow State Technical University, named Department 4, allegedly provides training and a suspected pipeline into GRU units, including those involved in hacking and disinformation.

Documents obtained by the consortium—which includes Le Monde, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, and other outlets—allegedly show how GRU intelligence officers, including those linked to the hacking group known as Fancy Bear, teach at Department 4. Students learn a range of hacking skills and must conduct penetration tests, according to the reporting. Some have graduated and joined both Fancy Bear and the notorious Sandworm group, which has been linked to attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, the Winter Olympics, and the NotPetya malware that caused billions of damage around the world.

While Ukraine has, for more than a decade, served as Russia’s number one testing ground for cyberwar techniques, Poland has come to represent its second favorite target. So it’s notable that this week Poland’s domestic intelligence agency, the ABW, warned that hackers infiltrated the networks of water utilities in five Polish towns last year. In some cases, the attackers penetrated deeply enough to access industrial control systems that could have affected the physical operations of those facilities—“a direct risk” to the continuity of the towns’ water supply, according to the ABW.

The report didn’t attribute the breaches to any country’s state-sponsored hackers, but noted more generally that Poland had faced escalating hacking operations “with particular emphasis on the special services of the Russian Federation.” The report also described Russia as carrying out a broader campaign of reconnaissance in preparation for cyber-sabotage operations that appeared to target the Polish military and the country’s critical infrastructure.

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