According to experts, the president-elect could be forbidden from taking his Peloton to the White House because the high-tech exercise bike poses a threat from hackers.
According to an article in Popular Mechanics, the 78-year-old Democrat is known to start his mornings with a workout on the popular $1,895 home exercise bike that connects riders to intense workout classes.
But Biden’s bike opens up security issues because it has a microphone, camera, and internet connection, which might push him to ditch it in Delaware when he travels to the White House on Wednesday, experts told the publication.
The security and compliance page of Peloton itself warns that “no matter how much effort we put into system security, vulnerabilities can still be present.”
And even though there are firewalls and intrusion detection tools, Max Kilger, director of the Data Analytics Program at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Popular Mechanics, “those things can be gotten around if you are really good and skilled.”
However, a bad actor might theoretically access the entire network because the bike has networking equipment that enables internet access to other devices, Kilger warned.
“So someone could actually attack that Peloton bike, install malware, and reach out to other places in the White House,” he said.
Kilger added that the most probable safety measure would be to “yank out the camera, you yank out the microphone, and you yank out the networking equipment.”
“And you basically have a boring bike. You lose the shiny object and the attractiveness,” he explained.
Setting up a special gym area with its own network only for the Peloton, apart from the White House, he said, would be an option.
It was not the first time such questions had to be discussed by the Secret Service. Reportedly, former first lady Michelle Obama has a modified Peloton without a camera or microphone, and in the White House, Trump allegedly installed an internet-based, room-size “golf simulator.”
