Eavesdropping With a Smart TV 93
An anonymous reader writes "A article on The Register titled talks about a demo that was given in London last month by NCC Group where they turned a modern TV into an audio bug. 'The devices contain microphones and cameras that can be utilized by applications — Skype and similar apps being good examples. The TV has a fairly large amount of storage, so would be able to hold more than 30 seconds of audio – we only captured short snippets for demonstrations purposes. A more sophisticated attack could store more audio locally and only upload it at certain times, or could even stream it directly to a server, bypassing the need to use any of the device’s storage.' Given the Snowden revelations and what we've seen previously about older tech being deprecated, how can we protect ourselves with the modern devices (other than not connecting them to the Internet)?"
No "Telescreen" Tag? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, this is precisely what Orwell predicted in 1984. I am going to find everyone I ever accused of being a tinfoil hat paranoic and apologize to them in bended knee...
Re:Don't connect them to the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Never attribute to stupidity what is easily explained by malice. The enemy is active, intelligent, malicious and not easily pinned down.
For example, there's a whole host of conversation going on these days about "Why does the NSA fail to implement basic security measures that could have prevented Snowden from doing what he did."
The answer is to act just as they do, and look at the metadata. Don't try to put your finger on who exactly did this or that, but try to understand their nature, goals and motivations... to define them in the abstract, and act against them in the abstract.
Who is served by an easily compromised NSA? Organized crime? Multinational corporations? Israeli intelligence? Doesn't matter exactly who, if you understand their nature, you can fuck with their agenda without ever knowing who they are.