The hacker who remotely disabled Chinese robot dogs

A hacker known as d0tslash He managed to remotely deactivate one of the robot dogs of the Chinese company Unitree Robotics, which produces four-legged drones very similar to those of Boston Dynamics for half the price. He then recounted the discovery of the kill switchthat is, a kind of emergency switch, up GitHuba site widely used by computer program developers.

The robot dogs of Unitree they have been widespread since 2020 and it is possible to buy one on AliExpress for around three thousand euros. In the last few days they have returned to the news thanks to a video that appeared on Twitterin which one of these, equipped with a Russian machine gun PP-19 Vityaz, fires at some targets, in what looks like an outdoor shooting range, covered with traces of snow. The dog seems to react discreetly to the recoil of the weapon, still managing not to fall after the barrage of shots.

Perhaps it is precisely because of this warlike application that d0tslash has decided to attack the robot, finding a way to disable all its functions in a second. As described by the hacker, the emergency switch is located in the robot’s power distribution box and each dog is also equipped with a remotely activated switch, connected to the Power distribution boarda device that feeds battery power to systems.

The switch can be activated manually, through the robot remote control, or through any device that can copy and transmit the 433 megahertz frequency on which it operates. That’s what d0tslash made, through Zero pinball machine, a device capable of hacking several digital devices. D0tslash then copied the 433 megahertz signal that the remote transmits to the dog to be deactivated and has posted all the information needed to use it on GitHub.