Unitree Robotics, one of China’s leading robot manufacturers, said it shut down a third-party remote control service that had exposed its Go1 robot dog to potential hacking, allowing unauthorised users to gain control of the machine and access its video cameras.
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The company identified a “security vulnerability” through which hackers obtained the management key for a third-party cloud tunnel service used by the Go1, the Hangzhou-based start-up said in a post on social platform X on Wednesday.
The tunnel service, which enabled remote control of the Go1, was completely shut down in late March, shortly after tech bloggers and hackers Andreas Makris and Kevin Finisterre published their findings online.
The service was provided by Zhexi Cloud, and the bloggers reported that nearly 2,000 institutions, including US internet-protocol addresses traced to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University and Carnegie Mellon University, had connected to it.
Neither Zhexi Cloud nor its affiliate, Shanghai Beirui Information Technology, immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.
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