# Hacking legged robots with spikes and stones: VLM backdoors and implanted components. 🤖🦾👠၊၊||၊😈

> Source: <https://it4sec.substack.com/p/hacking-legged-robots-with-spikes>
> Published: 2026-10-12 16:55:17+00:00

A group of academic security researchers from Michigan Technological University (USA) demonstrate a new generation of cyberattacks against AI-powered legged robots in their recent works.

What is a legged robot? Any robot that has legs! :) The main target of both attacks is the decision-making AI inside the robot.

**Attack 1:** Robot injected with a malicious component during manufacturing or maintenance.

Trigger: A specific sequence of the robots previous movements.

Action: Start injecting malicious prompts into the VLM decision engine to affect the robots operations.

**Attack 2:** A VLM backdoor can be embedded during the model training stage.

Trigger: Pressure patterns - small stones or spikes in the robots path that trigger its sensors in the right sequence.

Action: Start an embedded program of destruction or malicious activity.

Very interesting approach and cool results. Make sure your robot doesn’t step on stones! :)

More details:

StepTrigger: Contact-State-Triggered Backdoor Attacks on VLM-Powered Legged Robots [PDF]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26131](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26131)

Silent Sabotage: Internal State Triggered Backdoor Attacks on LLM-Powered Robotic Systems [PDF]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26184](https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26184)