Even the Dumbest Ransomware Is Almost Unremovable On Smart TVs (symantec.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Apparently even the easiest-to-remove ransomware is painfully hard to uninstall from smart TVs, if they're running on the Android TV platform, and many are. This didn't happen in a real-world scenario (yet), and was only a PoC test by Symantec. The researcher managed to remove the ransomware only because he enabled the Android ADB tool beforehand, knowing he would infect the TV with the ransomware. "Without this option enabled, and if I was less experienced user, I'd probably still be locked out of my smart TV, making it a large and expensive paper weight," said the researcher.

Comments

Re:Android == Windows?

[webmistressrachel]

"Windows CE didn't have that sort of penetration" - this is not actually accurate, companies just didn't Internetwork all of their rubbish embedded systems, leaving them unexposed

I'm still surprised every time I see a new example of a living installation of CE still in use in 2015.

Examples still in use today include:

- POS and cash registers (Fujitsu, others)

- ATMs (newer ones use a variant of 7 called Embedded, the successor to CE)

- devices with a display in a supermarket that can read barcodes, and check stock or prices (so called "guns", ASDA, Wal*Mart, Tesco)

- devices used to take signatures for postal delivery and parcel delivery (Royal Mail, UPS)

- devices to log utility meter readings in the field (G4S, British Gas)

- Police Airwave terminals of various descriptions (the Compaq iPaq with peripheral for fingerprint reader paired with a PCMCIA II Airwave modem, gives Greater Manchester Police an ID for a suspect in less than 30 seconds.)