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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Your TV is Watching You



Smart TVs can spy on their owners
  • Samsung claims it is only a design "flaw" that allows outsiders to watch you inside your home through your own TV. 
  • Right.  To that explanation I say Bullshit.


Viewers, beware: while you’re watching TV, your TV might be watching you back. A security firm discovered that Samsung’s Smart TV can give hackers access to the device’s built-in camera and microphones, allowing them to watch everything you do.

The Malta-based firm ReVuln posted a video showing its team of researchers hacking into one of the Samsung TVs and accessing its settings, channel lists, widgets, USB drives, and remote control configurations. The security flaw allows hackers to access any and all personal data stored on the TV.

“We can install malicious software to gain complete root access to the TV,” the video writes.

With this access, hackers can use the Smart TVs built-in camera and microphones to see and hear everything in front of it. Instead of just watching TV, viewers could themselves be watched without knowing it.


CIA To Spy On You Through TV, Appliances 
More and more personal and household devices are connecting to the internet, from your television to your car navigation systems to your light switches. The CIA cannot wait to spy on you through them.




CIA Spying On You Through Your Refrigerator




But this "flaw" isn’t present in just one specific model. The vulnerability affects all 11 Samsung televisions of the latest generation. The Smart TVs have many of the same features as a computer, but lack the same kind of protection. The devices do not have security features such as firewalls and antivirus software reports RT News.

Luigi Auriemma, co-founder of ReVuln, told NBC News that the main concern with this possibility is that hackers could target specific companies or individuals whose businesses they have an interest in.
Samsung claims it is only an
"accident" that they designed a TV
that watches you.

“In our opinion, it’s more interesting and realistic to think about attacks [against] specific targets reached via open/weak/hacked Wi-Fi or compromised computers of a network, instead of mass-exploiting via the Internet,” Auriemma wrote in a statement for NBC.

“That’s interesting due to the effects of the vulnerability (retrieving information and the possibility of monitoring) which are perfect for targeted attacks, from a specific person with a TV at home to a company with TVs in its offices.”

“Consider that little kid next door that’s good with computers,” said Travis Carelock, content director and research technologist at Black Hat.

Viewers who have any of the plasma 8000 series, the 7500 LED LCD series, the 8000 LED LCD series or the 9000 LED LCD series might want to make sure to keep personal data off their TVs and be careful about what they say or do in the device’s presence.

Samsung said it is launching an investigation to look into the security "flaw."


"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..."..
- George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5






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