Search Results for "firmware"

For Smart TVs, Malware May Hide In Broadcast Content

Researchers at Columbia University have published research showing how new technology that combines broadband and broadcast content could enable a wide range of traditional and novel cyber attacks on smart televisions and other devices: forcing them to interact with malicious web pages, harvesting credentials or carrying out denial of service attacks. The paper, published in May, explores potential attacks on combined broadcast-broadband devices that use an industry specification called Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband Television (HbbTV). According to the researchers, Yossef Oren and Angelos D. Keromytis, the HbbTV specification combines broadband technologies like HTML and broadcast features in an insecure manner. The vulnerabilities affect a wide range of smart entertainment devices, including smart televisions, in Europe and the United States. “This enables a large-scale exploitation technique with a localized geographical footprint based on radio frequency (RF) injection, which requires a minimal budget and infrastructure and is remarkably difficult to detect,” the researchers write. “The technical complexity and […]

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Bad Actor: With Update, LG Says No Monitoring, No Smart TV!

Customers of consumer electronics giant LG are raising alarm about a recent software update that asks owners to agree to have their viewing behavior tracked and monitored, or see their ‘smart’ TVs made dumb: with access to features like YouTube and Netflix disabled. Owners of some models of LG brand SmartTVs who have applied a recent firmware have taken to blogs to complain about a firmware update for their TVs that prompt them to agree to lengthy new Terms of Service and Privacy Agreements. The revised documents grant LG permission to monitor and record their viewing habits and their interactions with the device, including voice commands. Users who do not agree to the new terms find many of their smart TV features disabled, according to customer testimony and an analysis by one independent IT researcher. The prompt to read and accept a new “Legal Notice,” “Terms of Use” and “Privacy Policy” appears when SmartTV users first […]

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Dan Geer Keynote: Security of Things Forum

The following is a transcript of a speech given by Dr. Dan Geer at the Security of Things Forum on May 7, 2014. The Forum was held at The Sheraton Commander in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The official copy of Dr. Geer’s speech lives on his web site, and can be found here. .Security of Things .Dan Geer, 7 May 14, Cambridge Thank you for your invitation and to the other speakers for their viewpoints and for the shared experience. With respect to this elephant, each of us is one of those twelve blind men. We are at the knee of the curve for deployment of a different model of computation. We’ve had two decades where, in round numbers, laboratories gave us twice the computing for constant dollars every 18 months, twice the disk drive storage capacity for constant dollars every 12 months, and twice the network speed for constant dollars every […]

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Cisco To Invest $1B Building Secure Cloud For Internet Of Things

Cisco Systems announced that it will invest more than $1 billion building what it calls an “Intercloud” – a network of cloud platforms that will support a variety of new business applications, including those supporting connected devices that are part of the Internet of Things. The company said on Monday that the new initiative will greatly expand its cloud business over the next two years and provide APIs (application program interfaces) that will allow application developers to rapidly create new products suitable for use in the enterprise or by resellers and service providers. A range of Cisco’s existing partners have committed to deliver products or services for Cisco’s Intercloud Cloud Services including the Australian firm Telstra, Allstream, a Canadian communications provider and Ingram Micro Inc.a major technology wholesaler. Services provider SunGard Availability Services and Integralis have signed on, as has the IT consulting firm Wipro Ltd. “Together, we have the […]

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Is Analog The Answer To Cyber Terrorism?

Ralph Langner is one of the foremost experts on the security of critical infrastructure that we have. So, generally, when Ralph says something – whether its about Stuxnet, or cyberwar or the security of nuclear power plants – folks listen. And these days, Ralph is wondering, out loud, whether our reliance on digital systems to manage critical infrastructure has gone too far. The answer, he suggests, may be to go “back to the future,” as it were: reintroducing analog systems into the control process chain as a backstop for cyber attacks. Case in point: the Department of Homeland Security’s ICS-CERT warned on Friday that firmware for Siemens SIMATIC S7-1500 CPUs (Central Processing Units) contain nine vulnerabilities that could enable attacks such as cross site request forgery, cross site scripting and URL redirection. (Siemens has issued a firmware update that patches the holes.) Langner is among the world’s foremost experts on […]

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