Your Samsung and Roku smart TVs are vulnerable to hacking says a new report

It’s pretty awesome, just how smart our TVs have become. From my Samsung TV, I can play games on Sony’s servers via PlayStation Now, on my computer via SteamLink, or I can watch videos over Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, just to start. But in giving our TVs all these neat abilities, it seems a few security holes were inevitable. Consumer Reports has revealed findings that Samsung’s smart televisions, as well as televisions and streaming boxes using the Roku platform are vulnerable to hacks.

“We found that a relatively unsophisticated hacker could change channels, play offensive content, or crank up the volume,” Consumer Reports wrote. “This could be done over the web, from thousands of miles a way.”

The Roku vulnerability involves the way Roku devices interact with external remotes, such as the Roku smartphone app. The interface for that is completely unsecured. If you clicked into a site that injected malicious code into a computer on the same network as the television, that’s all it would take to see your tv’s volume cranked on some really weird YouTube videos or something like that. The Samsung vulnerability is a bit more specific, requiring that you both use Samsung’s smartphone remote app, and then the device that had that app on it be compromised.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/2018/02/08/hacking-samsung-tvs/