Snooping TV.

[Andy Burns]

Mine usually works when the phone is in my pocket and I'm driving "OK google, navigate to home".

[John Rumm]

I don't have any details of how their hack works, but I presume it starts with a compromised app install, or possibly a trojan update of some form.

If I were writing covert software that was going to phone home from time to time, I might only activate the lan port for a very brief period intermittently. I would also cache and DHCP allocated IP address so I did not leave requests visible to the router at unexpected times.

There may or may not be - but once compromised by whatever means (e.g. that may even include someone gaining physical access to it to load something from a USB stick) then it can do what ever is required.

Chances are the LED is controlled by software.

Yes easily - especially if you know what is being played on the speaker at the time - its a basic digital echo cancellation technique to excise the transmitted signal from the received one.

Most domestic situations will leak information in all kinds of ways...

How effective any security measure is will vary enormously depending on who your adversary is. If you are up against nation state funded spooks, then you are going to lose pretty much every time unless you *really* know what you are doing.

[John Rumm]

They will target the widely adopted products - quite a large number of smart TVs will share a limited number of code bases.

Note that they have custom firmware infecting code for all the common hard drive controllers, so they can load malware onto a machine such that its present before any OS loads, and a complete format and reinstall does not clear it.

Different levels of resources and funding!

[John Rumm]

Unlike for voice command processing, the TV does not need to understand the "bugged" speech - only upload it.

[dennis]

A few pence! And I really do mean they cost a few pence.

You could use a microphone array at the edge of the stage if you could get technicians with enough of a brain to put them in right.

Don't assume you know anything about signal processing just because you worked in TV. It wasn't exactly needed for such a simple job.

Amazon appear to have their echo working quite well in a home environment and the whole thing retails for £50.

[harry]

I switch off the mains on all my stuff. Should put a stop to it.

[dennis]

The TVs tend not to understand the speech and do the same as apple and M$ ie. the upload it to a server for recognition.

So if you want to listen in you can hack the server as long as the user is using the voice recognition. If they have disabled voice recognition in the menus then you need to hack the TV.

[Andy Burns]

So it deletes a couple of GB of stuff from flash that you'll not notice (the Channel5 app, old recordings of Grand Designs) records the audio and then uploads it later while you're streaming X-Factor.

[Graham.]

I felt at the time that that's what they want us to believe, so as to spare Apple's blushes for co-operating.

[Bob Eager]

It might wake upo every few minutes to phone hoime and ask if it is needed!

See above.

Probably software controlled so could lie!

That I am less sure of. You are the expert here ...

[Graham.]

As the microphone was intended to receive spoken commands while the set is playing normally, I would imagine this separation will occur natively.

If the spooks need a clean copy of the programme material in order to do the subtraction with greater accuracy, that won't pose a problem either.

[John Rumm]

Most of them seem to do a bit of trigger processing, so they know when to start uploading, then do the grunt work in the cloud.

Which was the object of the exercise being discussed I thought?

[dennis]

That's good because that's what I thought too. So going by ARW and TNP you must be wrong too.

I like the way tim posts saying that you can't hide from being seen on the router and snips the bits where I say how it can be done. I suppose that's the way it goes, some just like to pretend they know about things.

[newshound]

TV manufacturers are not going to fit nice big batteries or supercondensers inside. For a wifi-connected TV, it's going to be inert not long after being switched off at the wall, even if its firmware has been hacked.

Of course if you are tracking someone seriously, you might take notice if their phone or TV gets switched off.

[tim...]

If something deleted some of my saved recordings I'd bloody well notice

But in any case, these are smart TV's they don't have a store of recorded stuff

That'll be a three moth wait in my case (and no that's not relevant to the choice of program)

tm

>

[Jethro_uk]

Unless they have the capability to nobble your router first ?

[Jethro_uk]

My LG can store stuff picked up via it's tuner on an USB device (memory stick or HDD) if connected.

[Bob Eager]

My Samsung (spit) too.

[dennis]

So you can't update the firmware on your smart TV as there is no space that can be written to?

[Capitol]

Surely it's very easy with an OTA update? No need to go near the LAN until installed. Incidentally, does any piece of modern equipment work correctly when first installed?