When you buy a robot, you don’t expect it to be secretly reporting back to servers in China. Yet that’s exactly what researchers have found in Unitree’s humanoid and quadruped robots — popular machines already deployed in labs, homes, and even police departments. A new study suggests these constant data streams may not be an accident but part of a deliberate design. A pack of robot dogs infected with malware sounds like the premise of a dystopian video game. But security researchers revealed that Unitree’s popular humanoid and quadruped robots have a flaw that could make that nightmare a reality. The exploit, known as UniPwn, gives attackers total control of robots like the Unitree Go2 and B2 quadrupeds and G1 and H1 humanoids. And because the vulnerability spreads wirelessly through Bluetooth, an infected robot can automatically compromise others nearby. As researcher Andreas Makris told IEEE Spectrum, “an infected robot can simply scan for other Unitree robots in BLE range and automatically compromise them, creating a robot botnet that spreads without user intervention.”

Full report : Cybersecurity Experts Say Unitree Humanoid Robots Secretly Send Data to China and Let Hackers Take Over Your Network.