Likely Normal

This is the dystopian future of IoT—where everything is smart enough to get dumb malware. You wake up craving a perfectly chilled Chardonnay, only to find your smart wine cooler demanding bitcoin. Turns out, your fancy appliance also downloaded TotallyLegitWineApp.exe from a shady corner of the internet, and now your Pinot Noir is being held digitally hostage by a hacker who definitely drinks boxed wine.

Your toaster starts demanding ransom in unmarked bagels. Your robot vacuum kidnaps your socks and threatens to “redecorate” unless you wire $200 to an offshore account. Even your coffee maker goes rogue, locking you out until you “accept the updated terms”—which, somehow, include mining crypto while you sob into your cold brew.

To make things worse, the customer support for your ransomed smart home is just the hacker trolling you: “Have you tried not connecting your entire life to WiFi?” Meanwhile, your secure smart lock laughs as it changes the codes and deadbolts you out of your own house.