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Man accidentally vibe codes a robovac army [1]

['Gail Sherman']

Date: 2026-02-24  

The DJI Romo is a $2000 behemoth that mops and vacuums using LIDAR and AI. Sammy Azdoufal ended up controlling thousands of them when all he wanted to do was drive his robovac with a game controller.

Azdoufal, who is not a hacker by trade, used Claude Code to develop a method to connect his homegrown app to DJI so he could use his PlayStation controller with his Romo. However, the scanner his code created not only gave him access to his device; it gave him access and control over almost 7000. He was able to see home layouts and IP addresses, and control the devices' cameras and microphones.

DJI never responded to numerous emails from Azdoufal about the massive security flaw. It was only after he enlisted the help of The Verge that they took action, although they apparently initially lied about having fully corrected it. Sean Hollister wrote in The Verge,

"DJI can confirm the issue was resolved last week and remediation was already underway prior to public disclosure," reads part of the original statement provided by DJI spokesperson Daisy Kong. We received that statement on Tuesday morning at 12:28PM ET — about half an hour before Azdoufal showed me thousands of robots, including our review unit, reporting for duty.

Azdoufal has also discovered a vulnerability so egregious that Hollister is not revealing it until DJI has had time to correct it. DJI told The Verge on February 17th that it would be fixed within weeks.

Previously:

• Hacked Roomba will google your house

• A 'Roomba' for weeds

• Roomba wants to sell the maps of the inside of your home it created while cleaning

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