The company behind the Eiliko robot toy is finally breaking its silence after a Verge investigation exposed its AI companion robots as a security nightmare. Energize Lab now says it is hiring an independent security firm to review its systems — but security researcher Sammy Azdoufal says the company’s claims don’t add up yet.
The cute robot charm you can hang on your bag with built-in AI conversations told owners that “your secrets are safe with me.” In reality, hackers could easily read complete transcripts of everything owners told the toy — and that was just the beginning. The Verge and Azdoufal spent over a month trying to reach the company, including emails to CEO Shaw Yeung. Nobody answered.
Eiliko robot (Credits: The Verge)
Eiliko Security Firm: What Energize Lab Promises
In an unsigned statement, Energize Lab said it has “confirmed the core issues identified” in the reporting and is addressing each one. It claims that as of Wednesday it has closed all external access to its backend systems, disabled the interface that let a robot’s responses be modified remotely, and stopped storing conversation records and user profiles — pledging to delete records, profiles and avatar images already collected. A dedicated security@energizelab.com inbox has been set up. “We know that words alone will not earn that trust back,” the company wrote.
Eiliko Robot Still Storing Audio and Photos at Public URLs
Here’s the problem: with Azdoufal’s help, The Verge confirmed that even as the company sent its statement, it was still storing audio recordings and photos of customers at unsecured public web addresses with no protection — click a link and you’d see an owner’s face. Azdoufal says he still has full SSH access to the robots and can still theoretically read transcripts and modify the toy’s behavior. So the “closed all external access” claim doesn’t appear accurate. Notably, Energize Lab isn’t promising to stop collecting data for good: long-term memory and custom avatar features will return “until that review confirms they are secure.”
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Source: The Verge — read the full story there.
