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)?"
Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Buy a plain, regular computer LCD display. Connect Apple TV to display via HDMI, connect Apple TV to audio with optical output.
There, no physical spying inside your house.
1984 v 2014 (Score:5, Insightful)
1984: A cautionary tale about the power of the state and the dangers of ubiquitous surveillance.
2014: A real life documentary in which everyone carries around a mobile phone, everyone's car includes trackers with automatic remote location capabilities, major population centres are observed by numerous cameras logging to central databases under government control and backed by technology doing everything from facial recognition to gait analysis, even the privacy of your own home isn't private because there are literally cameras tucked away on your TV, and lots of people are OK with this as long as the pizza is still hot when it gets delivered and arrives in time for tonight's reality TV show.
Re:Don't connect them to the Internet (Score:1, Insightful)