Executive brief
The Unitree Go2 is a high-performance quadrupedal robot (robot dog) used for consumer and educational purposes. A security flaw in its communication system allows an attacker on the same network to upload and store malicious code on the robot without a password. This code can be tied to the robot's physical controller buttons, allowing an attacker to gain full control over the device (as root) when a button is pressed, potentially leading to physical safety risks or permanent device compromise.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a missing authentication (CWE-306) in the Eclipse CycloneDDS implementation used by the Unitree Go2. Specifically, the 'rt/api/programming_actuator/request' topic handled by 'actuator_manager.py' does not validate publishers. A network-adjacent attacker can join DDS domain 0 and publish a crafted message with 'api_id=1002' containing arbitrary Python code. The robot saves this code to '/unitree/etc/programming/' and maps it to a physical controller keybinding. Execution occurs with root privileges when the keybinding is activated by a user, and the malicious script persists across reboots. A fix was reportedly introduced in firmware version V1.1.13.
Affected products
- Unitree Go2 Firmware V1.1.7 - V1.1.9, V1.1.11 (EDU)
Timeline
- 2025-10-26: other: Vulnerability discovered by researchers
- 2025-10-29: other: Initial contact with Unitree security team
- 2026-02-24: patched: OTA patches released in V1.1.13
- 2026-02-26: disclosed: Public advisory and technical blog published