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European HbbTV Smart TV Holes Make Sets Hackable
mask.of.sanity writes "Vulnerabilities in Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV television sets have been found that allow viewers' home networks to be hacked, the programs they watched spied on, and even for TV sets to be turned into Bitcoin miners. The laboratory attacks took take advantage of the rich web features enabled in smart TVs running on the HbbTV network, a system loaded with online streaming content and apps which is used by more than 20 million viewers in Europe."
There STILL isn't anything worth watching on tv. :p
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-05/almost-half-of-americans-say-obama-untruthful-about-irs.html
"WASHINGTON DC - Engaged a relentless battle against time and fatigue, a select group of message scientists assembled by the White House's Center for Narrative Control say they will take "all steps necessary" to contain a recent outbreak of scrutonium, a deadly poll-eating supervirus that attacks the immuno-hope system, leaving victims vulnerable to material facts.
"Failure is simply not an option," said an exhausted Mission Chief David Axelrod. "If left unchecked, this virus may actually force us to move back to Chicago."
The recent re-infection of scrutonium into the body politic has been a harrowing turn of fortune for Axlerod and his scientific team. In November 2008, they had declared scrutonium "all but extinct," although they kept small amounts of the strain for use in laboratory experiments with Republican tax returns. It was thought to be in containment as recently as five weeks ago, with scientists citing poll results showing resistance to doses of unemployment previously considered fatal.
All that changed on September 12 after an unexpected outbreak in Benghazi, Libya. Although it caught Axlerod and his team by surprise, they were temporarily able to keep it under control with a regimen of YouTube blame therapy and gaffe-meme injections. But the new Benghazi strain proved stubbornly resistant, and has continued to slowly spread.
Amid their battle to contain the Benghazi strain, a second - and even more deadly - outbreak appeared in Denver on October 3. Nicknamed "the Doomsday Strain", the Denver scrutonium virus has thusfar been impervious to any attempt at containment.
"We're dealing with the ultimate buzzkiller here," said Senior Narrative Engineer Stephanie Cutter. "This one directly attacks voters' ability to hallucinate happy thoughts, or even ignore the obvious - no matter how many squirrels we innoculate them with."
Despite all-out efforts to contain the virus, by Friday daily internal gauge readings at CNC headquarters indicated a public opinion disaster was in the making. In order to buy time, Axlerod called on reserves from the 101st Media Narrative Squadron.
"With a virus this aggressive, you need boots on the ground to help fight any new outbreak and sterilize the area with distractions," said CNC jounalistic affairs liaison David Plouffe. "Luckily, the 101st is highly trained, unquestioningly loyal, and completely immune to all known post-2008 strains of scrutonium."
"That Mitt Romney sure seemed awful testy, didn't he?" said hazmat-suit clad Lt. Ben Smith of the 101st's Politico Company, sweeping the rubble of Denver for trace readings of scrutonium.
While Smith and others work around the clock to quarantine the virus, Axlerod and his team remain deep beneath the White House in a specially constructed containment laboratory, racing to find a cure before it has a chance to wipe out Washington as we know it. Although all their experiments have thusfar proven unsuccessful, Axlerod refuses to concede.
"If I've learned anything in this job, it's that hope is a strategy," he said, wiping flopsweat from his combover.
"For instance, maybe Joe Biden will find a cure Wednesday night," he added.
One more reason to buy a dumb computer monitor and use it as a TV.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130605/AUTO0103/306050039/Treasury-UAW-health-care-trust-will-sell-50-million-shares-GM-stock?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE
" The Treasury sold nearly 20 percent of its remaining shares in General Motors Co. in the first three months of the year, the Detroit automaker disclosed Thursday.
The Treasury, which initially held 60.8 percent of GM as part of the U.S. $49.5 billion bailout, now owns just 16.4 percent, or 241.7 million shares. In December, the Treasury sold GM 200 million shares of its stake for $5.5 billion to reduce its stake to 300 million shares.
In total, Treasury has recouped $30.6 billion. At current trading prices, Treasury would lose around $10 billion on its GM bailout."
The treasury is of course all taxpaying citizens, that is Obama just stole all this money and gave it to the unions which as we know don't do squat for the country save for sucking Obamas cock.
That's the fact, deal with it.
More graNdiose
Bitcoin mining is so difficult at this point (due to so much interest, and dedicated hardware designs being applied to it) that it is nearly impossible to do on "harvested" hardware like these smartTV devices. Even getting a few thousand into a mining botnet is not likely to yield any significant return compared to say, using it as a for-hire DDOS botnet, or a spam botnet.
This seems to be blown out of all proportion.
In other words, an "attacker" who controls the broadcast TV signal can make your TV show a webpage they control. Yawn. The whole point of HbbTV is that the broadcaster can show a webpage on your TV; there are the usual web browser security features to make that safe. Now if they'd found a security hole in the browser, that would be a real attack, but all they seem to have done is pretended to be a broadcaster.
It's hard to control the broadcast TV signal, too. You either need to hack the head-end equipment or go out in a van with your own TV transmitter. The head-end equipment is reasonably well protected, just like any other high-value server. If you try going out in a van with your own TV transmitter, then the authorities (OFCOM in UK) will come after you with direction-finding gear and you'll be arrested. Even if you set up the transmitter and leave, so you're not arrested, the TV transmission gear costs a few thousand pounds so losing that every time will probably make attacks unprofitable, and they will eventually track you down.
unoptimized bitcoin miners...in a tv set...like THIS is the security threat we all need to be on the lookout for. really?
but..oh yeah...there will be 20 million of them....with lazers!
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
This is the original article, the Australian is covering. Just FYI
http://mherfurt.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/security-concerns-with-hbbtv/
Also the broadcast station could offer compromised content themselfes. Not very unlikely when you see what some of these folks already do. You could find the original article on mherfurt(dot)wordpress(dot)com Cheers!
Unlimited* = Limited
Smart* = Terminally Dumb
McAffe for TV!
[shudder]
I will stick with my old fashion 19.5" Sharp CRT TV from 1996 that still works and not always used. :P
Wait, when will smart TVs get security softwares like other devices? :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).