Man Hacks 7,000 Robot Vacuums to Become World’s Creepiest Gamer

Photo by (Augustin-Foto) Jonas Augustin on Unsplash

KEY POINTS

•Sammy Azdoufal discovered he could control and access 7,000 DJI Romo robot vacuums remotely on Valentine's Day 2025.
•DJI had started patching some issues before Sammy exposed the full scale of the vulnerability with a PlayStation gamepad.
•The controversy echoes a 2017 incident when DJI treated security researcher Kevin Finisterre poorly, casting doubt on their bug bounty practices.

On Valentine's Day 2025, tech detective Sammy Azdoufal wasn’t handing out chocolates—instead, he used a dusty PlayStation gamepad to commandeer 7,000 DJI Romo robot vacuums equipped with cameras, granting him intimate peeks into strangers’ living rooms. DJI, who had begun fixing some security holes before Sammy’s cinematic reveal, now faces public demands to pay him for finding the digital equivalent of a maid spying on your laundry. Adding awkward legacy baggage: back in 2017, DJI annoyed security researcher Kevin Finisterre by treating him like a pest, raising suspicions about their bug bounty etiquette. Sammy’s smackdown may finally force DJI to finish patching Romo’s peeping problem.