PETKIT Eversweet Ultra pet fountain – Security, privacy, data residency, and other questions explored.

I well understand every smart home IoT product comes with some privacy trade-offs. However, usually it’s possible to mitigate certain risks that might make you uncomfortable, for ex: a device has a microphone; if that bothers you open the device and disconnect it.

As a security minded person, I do not think a pet drinking fountain needs an ultra-wide high definition camera equipped with night vision that rivals most in home security cameras. Nor do I think it requires a microphone.

When I checked the network traffic of this fountain I was horrified to see it upload hundreds of megabytes of data directly to Chinese servers. I tried blocking these ip but they just kept changing (probably an anycast thing, potentially understandable). So I tried to block its DNS lookup for its domains but that didn’t work either, because if you block it from connecting to its Chinese DNS servers, it will use googles, when you block that it uses cloud flare’s, when you block that (we’re on the 4th block now) only then does it ask the DNS server provided via DHCP and your router. What in the holy🤬 kind of network device behavior is that!?

This made me even more concerned. Limiting the camera view ( by some by placing some shielding around it) is one thing, limiting the microphone is another. I wanted to see if it was possible to physically disconnect it’s microphone. cracked open the device (no easy feat) you’ll need specially long and thin screwdrivers to accomplish this.

I found some really interesting things I took pictures to share with you all. Something’s I will point out straight off the bat.

1. The microphone array is in the top of the unit, (not pictured) is exists on some kind of bus board, which so without doing extensive hacking there is no way to determine which lines to cut, or easy way of disconnecting it from the main board.

2. There is an insanely unnecessary amount of glue, and epoxy all over the just about every board, connector, pin out.

3. The mainboard is covered with a clear enamel / waterproof coating. But it’s about 1/2 an inch thick. I’ve take apart a lot of stuff, I’ve never seen a coating that thick, on any circuit board I have ever inspected. I asked my friend who works at a US circuit board manufacturing facility literally who literally applies these coatings. He agreed it was probably more about keeping the board from being accessed than it was about waterproofing it.

4. Not a single chip or component has a single laser, engraved, or identifiable marking. That’s weird to me, I’ve have never seen that before either.

I had edit these images slightly because of reflections etc