Maybe one day we’ll reach a point where it’s easier to ask, “What can’t Doom run?” That is because YouTuber and device hacker Aaron Christophel has found a way to make the classic shoot ’em work on an electric toothbrush.
Thanks to the rise of smart internet connectivity, sensors and screens are being crammed into all kinds of home appliances, including toasters, garbage cans and even electric toothbrushes. And thanks to the latter – in this case an Evowera Planck Mini smart toothbrush – Christophel was able to run Doom.
The Evowera Planck Mini is a somewhat advanced smart electric toothbrush, with color display, Wi-Fi connectivity and app for brushing coaching; There’s enough technology here to make people who still use a manual toothbrush feel like a primitive human who just got a fork. But it also means the toothbrush is ripe for hacking.
Christophel was able to use the smart toothbrush’s over-the-air (OTA) update functionality to install custom firmware on the Planck Mini’s ESP32-C3 microcontroller via his own ESP32 development board. From there, the YouTuber loaded Doom onto the toothbrush; a simple enough process, as others have already gotten Doom running on ESP32 microcontrollers.
Despite having access to the toothbrush’s hardware and sensor data, to control Doom Christophel had to connect a Bluetooth mouse, with the movements of the player character – Doom Guy – mapped to the forward and backward movements of the mouse .
As you can see in the video above, it seems to work quite well. It wouldn’t be my first gaming platform, as I prefer to play Doom on a PC or Nintendo Switch. But it’s cool nonetheless.
However, this does raise questions about safety.
Smart stuff, sloppy security?
Being able to hack yet another smart device, seemingly without much effort, is raising concerns about the security of smart devices among opportunistic hackers. Ever since companies and would-be IT thought leaders touted the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) for all kinds of smart networking and home automation, people have noticed security issues and hacking attacks have occurred.
But the ESP32-C3 microcontroller comes with built-in security, such as secure boot functionality, that should prevent malicious code from running on it. However, side channel attacks have been able to bypass this and extract data from the chip’s flash memory. Such attacks require significant effort and require nearby access to the targeted microcontroller.
So while no smart device is ever completely secure, you can be fairly confident that no one can easily hack into and mess up your smart toothbrush while you’re giving your teeth a brush. But if you have a house full of smart gadgets, it doesn’t hurt to make sure they’re connected to secure apps and networks and functioning properly.