At the moment, the amount of damage Auriemma can do with his attack is modest when compared with the sophisticated exploits carried out by trojans used to siphon money out of bank accounts. Still, there’s nothing stopping him from plundering the contents of USB sticks attached to a vulnerable TV. And with more work, it’s possible he could develop firmware that monitors the programs, cameras, or movies it displays.
“A common device like a TV can be used for monitoring people and stealing information,” he wrote. “In this situation it doesn’t matter if the TV is reachable by the Internet or not because the attacker has a specific selected target: a person at home or a company.”
A video demonstration of the hack follows:
ReVuln – The TV is watching you
In the event a TV is behind a router that uses network address translation, Auriemma’s attack won’t work at the moment. But with more work, he says it could be possible to use exploits based on IPv6, the next-generation Internet routing protocol, to bypass that protection. He also said readers shouldn’t discount the ability to carry out the attack on local networks, since TVs may be plugged into office networks.
Several readers were confused by Auriemma’s comment that it doesn’t matter if the TV is reachable on the Internet. He said the threat that a TV can be accessed through a network, either by someone cracking a weak Wi-Fi password or someone who has limited network privileges, are two examples of the vulnerability being exploited even if there’s no Internet access.
Two days after this article was published Samsung representatives issued the following statement: “We have discovered that only in extremely unusual circumstances a connectivity issue arises between Samsung Smart TVs released in 2011 and other connected devices. We assure our customers that our Smart TVs are safe to use. We will release a previously scheduled software patch in January 2013 to further strengthen Smart TV security. We recommend our customers to use encrypted wireless access points, when using connected devices.”