nitrohigito t1_j7b5drx wrote on February 5, 2023 at 2:11 PM

Reply to comment by trumpcovfefe in Echolocation could give small robots the ability to find lost people by thebelsnickle1991

That friendly write-up features zero mentions of any kind of hacking.

trumpcovfefe t1_j7b5y97 wrote on February 5, 2023 at 2:16 PM

Yeah thats on the friendly version. The article write up including gov use goes over that.

I'll look for it later, its been years. The original idea was for the gov to use this to hack into systems in buildings to rescue hostages.

Similar to using heat pattern imaging systems to see where people are in a room before breaching, but the echo location allows for it to be done in larger spaces and through denser walls.

Im going back to sleep for now. Cheers

nitrohigito t1_j7bb18w wrote on February 5, 2023 at 2:58 PM

I'm sure state actors can hack a breadth of devices to achieve such a goal, was just meaning to point out that while cyberattacks tend to be highly scalable, there's enough variation across devices like this that you still need to be moderately lucky and put in some serious work hours to be able to pull this off. It's definitely not a "they just go an' haxx all devices in der" type deal, and it's needlessly alarmist to claim so.

There's also a number of other imaging techniques they can reach for. You mentioned infrared, but they can even use something like WiFi to image behind a wall. All much more circumstance-agnostic and cheap than having to build and maintain an assortment of exploit chains merely for use on a short-notice for echolocation.

If any group has such capabilities developed, they almost certainly use it much more practically (such as for surveillance). And those exploit chains won't be developed by "MIT scientists" who can certainly find a better way to spend their valuable time.