Is my smart TV spying on me?!?
So you got a great deal on a big screen smart TV on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and then you see an article in your news feed about the FBI warning consumers that their smart TV may be spying on them (if you haven’t already seen the story you can read it here). Huh.. Why would Samsung, Sony, LG or others want to spy on me after I invited them into my home? It’s very unlikely that any TV manufacturer would want to “spy” on you by operating your smart TVs camera or microphone without your permission…the liability and public relations nightmare that would follow would be way too much to overcome. Now will they track what you watch…you bet! The same practice is used by Amazon Prime, NetFlix, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, etc… but you accept that data gathering as part of the terms and conditions of the applications when you install or enable them. So what is the FBI referring to when they connect smart TVs with spying? Specifically, the FBI is talking about unauthorized access to your home or corporate network through your smart TV itself and the potential for exploitation of the camera and microphone features. You may be one of many that weren’t even aware that your TV has a microphone and/or camera. Camera’s have been a common feature for awhile now and if you’re not using video conferencing features of the TV; Samsung SDF, Skype, Sony Android TV, you can overcome the camera activation issue by placing black electrical tape over the camera eye on your TV or if you’re lucky, you can disable the camera (and trust your TV manufacturer) in the setup menu for your TV. As for microphones, that’s a little trickier…and if you’re wondering why your TV even has a microphone, the idea was to provide voice directed convenience to the TV owner. Think “show me all the movies with Steve Carell on now” type of thing.
The one saving grace is that you have to at least initiate this voice interaction with your TV by pressing a button on the remote to start the “listening”. Like a walkie-talkie the channel isn’t open until the sequence is initiated by the remote..under normal circumstances. But…if hackers were able to find a vulnerability in the underlying operating system or application in use on the TV they COULD (major emphasis on could) under the most generous of circumstances gain access to the microphone and listen in. This is not unprecedented as hackers have (routinely) gained access to baby cams, baby-sitter cams, nanny cams, etc… and utilized the two way microphones…to the point where there are dedicated websites for people to ahh…”drop in” on said cameras. Disconcerting I know and for a long time a very real inhibitor for Internet connected devices. Typically those camera owners haven’t changed default passwords, haven’t maintained updates or have very open underlying network but still, not OK. If you’ve read this far you may wonder; my phone has a camera and a microphone as well…why is the FBI warning me about my TV. Well your phone whether Android or Apple, has an underlying operating system that’s maintained diligently by Apple or Google. We all know this by the sheer number of updates that are security related and otherwise that we see. Smart TVs…not so much. It’s not their “core” business to harden and maintain operating systems or software.
OK so I put tape over the camera, I disabled or don’t use the microphone on the remote…now what? This is an important part of the article that could be lost from the FBI warning. Hackers may use the TV itself to penetrate your home network…meaning they don’t care about the camera or microphones themselves they just want “trusted” access on your network. Well that’s not unique to smart TVs but it is an age old problem that plagues gaming systems, streaming devices, voice controlled devices and yes smart TVs. In a world with increasing Internet connected devices or Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity home network security has never been more important. At any point in time you should be aware of what’s connected to your network, what’s going out to the Internet and what device is talking to what other device on your network. This is the only way to know for certain what’s taking place on your network with your explicit say so and otherwise.
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