Hackers have found that a robot dog carrying a submachine gun has a kill switch that can be accessed using a tiny handheld hacking tool.
The discovery was posted on Twitter by hackers going by the handles KF@d0tslash and MavProxyUser on GitHub and Twitter.
“Good news!” KF@d0tslash said on Twitter. “Remember that robot dog you saw with a gun!? It was made by @UnitreeRobotic. Seems all you need to dump it in the dirt is @flipper_zero. The PDB has a 433mhz backdoor.”
One of the Unitree robot dogs was visible in the video being connected to a power source by d0tslash. A Flipper Zero, multitool device that can communicate wirelessly across RFID, Bluetooth, NFC, and other bands, is used to gain control of the bot.
Additionally, when activated by the hacker, the mechanical dog seizes up and collapses.
According to the hackers, every dog ships with a remote cut-off switch attached to its power distribution board, or the part of a machine that routes power from the batter to its various systems.
This kill switch scans the 433 MHz band for a specific signal to turn the robot off. The wireless remote that instantly turns off some of the Unitree robots is included in the box.
