Communications of the ACM
Research Robots Sometimes Left nsecured on the Internet, Study Finds
Brown University researchers were able to identify exposed systems running the Robot Operating System, including some that could be connected to operational robots.
Credit: Nick Dentamaro
Brown University researchers have found up to 100 exposed systems running the Robot Operating System (ROS), with as many as 19 considered to be fully operational robots.
The researchers demonstrated it is possible to control these robots remotely, spying on camera feeds and sending commands to move the robots around.
The team came to these conclusions following a worldwide scan of hosts running ROS over three different periods last year and this year. They sent queries to more than 4 billion IP addresses worldwide, looking for programs running on the transfer communication protocol port that ROS normally uses.
After creating the list of IP addresses that responded to that port, the team sent passive ROS commands to confirm the program on the other side was ROS.
The team, which demonstrated the possibility of controlling the exposed robots remotely, said its findings underscore the importance of robot users paying attention to security in an increasingly connected digital world.
From Brown University
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