what’s lurking inside these creepy robot dogs?

you know what else comes with special features? … idk anyway check out https://lowlevel.academy and learn to code today! ( its on sale btw 😏)

Wow these robots looked cool but I couldn't think of a reason to get one but glad I didn't. It does seem common for IoT stuff to be like "hey this device is extendable and you can do you're own thing with it" just means "we made it really insecure and that makes it easy for you (or anyone) to do whatever you want with it"

homeless people from all over the world will use these robots as their toys

Three “Brains,” One Body
Raspberry Pi 4 (the “master”)

Handles high‑level logic, network, and coordination.

Feeds off your external power supply and the smart battery via a power‑management board.

Nano‑1 & Nano‑2 (the “body controllers”)

Each Nano‑4GB talks to two depth cameras and crunches vision data for walking and obstacle avoidance.

Nano‑3 (the “head controller”)

Drives the head’s two depth cameras and any extra sensors up top.

All three modules link into an internal Ethernet switch—that’s your backplane for data and commands.

The Sensor & Actuator Bus
Sensors:

IMU and “master controller” feed inertial data into the switch.

Depth cameras plug directly into their assigned Nano board.

Motors:

A shared RS‑485 bus snakes out from the master switch to all 12 brushless motor controllers in the legs.

Why This Matters for Hacking
Ethernet switch = one chokepoint for network‑level MITM or firewall rules.

UART headers likely live on each compute board—your golden ticket for console access.

RS‑485 bus is where motion commands flow; spoofing packets here could let you “puppet” the legs.

Flash storage on each Nano (eMMC or SPI‑NOR) holds the firmware you’ll dump, patch, and reflash.

Attack‑Surface Roadmap
Pi 4 first: It’s higher‑level, already running Linux—UART → dump /dev/mmcblk0 → patch U‑Boot or systemd.

Nanos next: Repeat the UART‑dump‑patch dance on each; they host the computer‑vision and gait‑control code.

Lock down RS‑485: Once your firmware’s clean, either block or inject commands on the motor bus.

americans hyper focussing on chinese 'surveillance' as if the real problem is not knock knocking at your door is absolutely surreal to watch

That backdoor is the standard chinese backdoor that we see in some of these routers and embedded devices.

I had a Go2. It was fun but also didn't do anything with it and sold it. I never had the balls to 1: connect it to my network, or 2: use their app.. I REALLY try not using any chinese apps and if I do, I do it on a specific device.

This is what happens when you let electronics and mechanical engineer go by themselves without a software dev or cybersecurity expert auditing their code

Doesn't the S in IOT stand for security?!?

I tend to believe that it wasn't malicious but developers/release managers being lazy. Why? Because they open-sourced the software and provided the Cloudsail key to the researchers.

I doubt that will happen (lights go out)

the Huawei phone memes are real

I think it’s pronounced “Sexy”

The surveillance spy phones are not enough, so they are making surveillance pets and women. This is an attack on humanity; I repeat, this is an attack on Humanity.

so what I'm hearing is a rouge AI could instantly access an army of robot dogs without going through any real security 🤔 that's wonderful

Also. Isle of Dogs Vibes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt__kig8PVU)

Thanks maate 👍(Ed). I just passed the references (and your beautiful mug) on to "OTAhgo" uni.. Not often you see kiwi entities named.