U.K. Government Warns Of Sex Toy Hacking Danger

Four years ago I reported how hackers could remotely lock a chastity belt with potentially disastrous consequences. The U.K. Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has warned that remotely accessed sex toys remain a turn-on for hackers and could “inflict physical and psychological harm” on their victims.

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The Sex Toy Hacking Risk

Research commissioned by the U.K. Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology has detailed how remote-controlled sex toys, specifically those with Bluetooth connectivity, are potentially vulnerable to attack or interception by malicious third parties. The research, originally published Mar. 2023, has, for some unknown reason been picked up by multiple media outlets again on Jan. 11. Which is a good enough reason for me to once again warn users of the dangers that they may not realize they are exposing themselves, and their lovers, to.

The research, “A Review on the Risks and Psychological Harms Presented by Consumer IoT Products,” was conducted by Dr. Mark Cote, Dr. William Seymour, Dr. Jennifer Pybus and Dalia Mariasin. Although it covered everything from children’s toys to fitness trackers and even smart light bulbs, it’s the section on sex toys that is of most interest currently.

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Warning that sex toys have “multiple vulnerabilities and attack surfaces,” with a “clear capacity to inflict physical and psychological harm onto unknowing consumers,” the researchers pointed to those with Bluetooth connectivity to a companion app as being of the greatest danger. “Often these connections are not encrypted,” they said, “thereby rendering them more vulnerable to attack and/or interceptions from malicious third parties.”

Not that this is the only risk, of course; there’s also the attack surface of insecure intermediaries involved in the remote control functionality, like third-party application programming interfaces to be taken into account.

So, what are the risks the report talks of? When it comes to psychological harms, these are said to be applicable if the disclosure of sensitive personal data is exploited, whereas physical harm could come about by “overheating the device” or the aforementioned locking of a device with a ransom required to unlock it.

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Mitigating The Sex Toy Hacking Risk

My advice for anyone using a sex toy is to ask if they really need to connect it to an app to get the pleasure they want and if doing so is really worth the hacking risk, no matter how slight that might be. If you need that remote connectivity, ensure you keep the device itself and the smartphone you connect it to updated in terms of software and firmware to mitigate that risk even further.