Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: Researchers hacked Google Gemini to take control of a smart home

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:19:26 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/resear...

Wired reported on new cybersecurity research that demonstrated a hack of the
Google Gemini artificial intelligence assistant. The researchers were able to
control connected smart home devices through the use of indirect prompt
injections in Google Calendar invites. When a user requested a summary of
their calendar and thanked Gemini for the results, the malicious prompt
ordered Google's Home AI agent to take actions such as opening windows or
turning lights off, as demonstrated in the video above.

Before attacks were demonstrated this week at the Black Hat cybersecurity
conference, the team shared their findings directly with Google in February.
Andy Wen, a senior director of security product management with Google
Workspace, spoke to Wired about their findings.

"ItΓÇÖs going to be with us for a while, but weΓÇÖre hopeful that we can get
to a point where the everyday user doesnΓÇÖt really worry about it that
much," he said of prompt injection attacks, adding that instances of those
hacks in the real world are "exceedingly rare." However, the growing
complexity of large language models means bad actors could be looking for new
ways to exploit them, making the approach difficult to defend against. Wen
said Google took the vulnerabilities uncovered by the researchers "extremely
seriously" and used the results to speed its work on building better tools to
block this type of attack.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/resear...
take-control-of-a-smart-home-201926464.html?src=rss

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