Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Varche]

I dare say greater minds have already sorted this but with the profusion of smart devices e.g. TV connected to the Internet......

What stops them being hacked/changed or infected by some enterprising soul?

[chrisgixer]

Not much it seems.

Although passwords are far too easy to get round. And it's not always down to the device manufacturer. Amazon gave out an Apple ID to a spoof caller. The owner of the id lost his apple account, and all his devices where locked.

But as you say, there's smarter minds than me that know more....

[aaronjb]

What stops them being hacked/changed or infected by some enterprising soul?

In theory "Secure design", in practice it's just a matter of time - if someone malicious can connect to the device somehow (internet, bluetooth, wifi, etc) then it's only a matter of time.

There is no such thing as a "secure" computer system, besides one buried in concrete..

And as Chris mentioned, social engineering is still a great way in to a target system.

[Kevin Wood]

Frankly, the way some of this kit is thrown together and pushed out of the door, I wouldn't be connecting it to my home network. "White goods" are a world away from properly supported software when it comes to getting security holes patched and so on, and once your TV is no longer this year's hot model, you'll get nothing at all in the way of updates.

Now, if you're using it for streaming a bit of content from your NAS box, you'll just be frustrated that it only has token support for a couple of CODECs and is thus quite selective about what it'll play, but now they have web browsers and such like integrated they are a recipe to get owned, IMHO.

Besides, they spy on you http://doctorbeet.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/lg-smart-tvs-logging-usb-filenames-and.html not for me, thanks.

[aaronjb]

Agree entirely with everything Kevin said.  In fact, I had a vague recollection of one of our internal security calls where we discussed hacking "white goods", e.g.:

http://mashable.com/2013/08/02/samsung-smart-tv-hack/

found vulnerabilities in different 2012 models of Samsung Smart TVs that allowed them to turn on the camera, take control of social media apps like Facebook or Skype, and access files and basically any app on the set.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/01/16/263111193/refrigerator-hacked-reveals-internet-of-things-security-gaps

Included in the attack were smart TVs, wireless speakers and at least one refrigerator

[Kevin Wood]

However, getting back to the OP's question:

What stops them being hacked/changed or infected by some enterprising soul?

Having used it myself, I can say, with some confidence, that it'll be your internet connection that will stop them. Hackers don't have that much patience!

[chrisgixer]

Ah yes, www.thebooniessecurity.com

[chrisgixer]

I would add, our Virgin bb was extremely secure for 24hrs, day before yesterday.

We'd of been glad of any form of connection at all.

[Kevin Wood]

I would add, our Virgin bb was extremely secure for 24hrs, day before yesterday.

We'd of been glad of any form of connection at all.

I think our Zen connection had some kind of glitch once.. when we moved house... just under 10 years ago.

[chrisgixer]

I would add, our Virgin bb was extremely secure for 24hrs, day before yesterday.

We'd of been glad of any form of connection at all.

I think our Zen connection had some kind of glitch once.. when we moved house... just under 10 years ago.

Yours a bit les populated than ours. I wonder if ours is disrupted everytime they get a new customer. Each time we see virgin vans turn up after the removals lorry has cleared off... Ay up, we'll have a drop in service better security for a brief period soon .

[Kevin Wood]

Yours a bit les populated than ours. I wonder if ours is disrupted everytime they get a new customer. Each time we see virgin vans turn up after the removals lorry has cleared off... Ay up, we'll have a drop in service better security for a brief period soon .

My parents have that problem. There is clearly a duff pair in the bundle that heads off to their exchange, and whenever anyone in the village complains, someone else gets swapped onto the cr@p pair. Why the hell they don 't just cut the bad wire short so nobody else can get lumbered with it, I don't know. Perhaps they're hoping it'll fix itself!

[Rods2]

The way hardware companies develop and adapt software as an afterthought guarantees that there are going to be plenty of vulnerable systems out there.

Malicious control by third parties of some household goods doesn't bare thinking about, like cookers turned on full when you have left a tea towel on the hob or that pan of cooking oil. As the Welsh say: "Come home to a real fire".

[05omegav6]

Daily Fail scaremongering notwithstanding... wtf would a cooker be connected to t'internet

[Gaffers]

The way hardware companies develop and adapt software as an afterthought guarantees that there are going to be plenty of vulnerable systems out there.

They cannot do things properly first-time, if they do I am out of a job

[TheBoy]

Daily Fail scaremongering notwithstanding... wtf would a cooker be connected to t'internet

The current wankword is "the internet of things", with everything connected.

Maybe preheat the oven before you leave work, because a) you're retarded, and b) you're even more retarded as most cookers have timer functions that even a 5 year old could use.

Fridges and freezers, yeah, can understand them. Washing machines and dish toshers, nah, as you still need some organic mongrel to load/unload them, and is it really that hard to press a button at the same time?


I was going to go into a rant about using gayPhones are remotes for network connected hifi and TV, and how daft that is compared to an old fashioned infrared remote, but suspected chrisgixer may get the hump