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Your LG TV Might Be Spying on Your Entire Network While You Think It's Turned Off (thecybersecguru.com)
submitted 1 day ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51634640

A new Gamers Nexus investigation found a retail LG TV actively scanning the local network for phones, laptops, smartwatches and other connected devices, while also capturing microphone audio when the screen appeared to be in standby. The investigation found voice data being stored locally even after the TV was disconnected from the network, with the queued data uploaded once connectivity returned. Researchers also uncovered webOS vulnerabilities that could potentially turn the television into a remotely controlled surveillance device. The really unsettling part isn't just the advertising angle. It's the fact that a consumer television can sit inside your trusted network, enumerate other devices, access a microphone, store collected data locally and communicate with external infrastructure. Put that same device in a corporate office, hospital, hotel or conference room and the security implications become considerably more serious. I went through the investigation in detail, including the network scanning, microphone behavior, ACR, webOS attack surface, offline data collection and practical mitigations

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[–] 1 point 2 hours ago

I wonder if I can disable it if I rooted webOS on my parents' TV

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    [–] 9 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    ... Well great, now I have to check whether my television has a goddamn microphone for some reason. I didn't think to check because it's a television.

    Never connected it to the Wifi though.

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    • [–] 4 points 9 hours ago (1 child)

    Is there a way to direct all the iffy traffic from the tv to a pi hole?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    Could connect the tv to the guest wifi network which would prevent it from accessing your local network. Plug in an android tv box of some variety and connect that to the network and you can cut the tv off f4om internet entirely.

    If you set the pihole as your primary DNS on your router then all network traffic goes that way anyway. Set up google as a secondary in case your pihole goes down. Or configure a second pi hole for resilience and set that as the backup.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago

    The GN investigation discovered that LG makes the TVs mesh with each other as well. So even if you don't connect your LG to the internet, it can connect with other LG devices in the neighbourhood and exfiltrate data that way.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 hours ago* (1 child)

    Fuck that, become ungovernable. If the pihole is down, the tv is down.

    Build your own router and
    Redirect all port 53 to your pihole
    Block port 853 on that vlan
    Block these ips on that vlan
    https://github.com/dibdot/DoH-IP-blocklists

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  • [–] 1 point 4 hours ago

    I had a raspberry pi working as a router but when my provider gave me a zyxel router i didnt need it anymore as its super customisable.

    Will i need to go back to my openwrt router to get this working? Since its saying github actions update the list?

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    • [–] 21 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

    It's hard to find a dumb TV.
    Monitors and projectors are going the same way. Not connecting them might not be enough.

    Time to learn how to use a soldering iron.

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  • [–] 9 points 12 hours ago* (1 child)

    modern ones are soldered directly to the board and integrate bluetooth into the same chip and removing that chip form the board could remove the ability to use bluetooth functions and the remote, however!!!!!!! most have usb ports!!!!!! lets make new operating systems and fucking delete their file system, load a new os that lacks the abilities these manufactures have.

    The hardware is whatever but if we remove the file systems that its preloaded with it won't be able to load any of its preinstalled shit. If we mod the operating system we can mod some of the shit the hardware is capable of doing through the software and coding. Kinda like how windows 11 is known for lowering ram speed.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 hours ago (1 child)

    Why are you concerned with the USB ports?

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    [–] 14 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

    I don’t care that companies thought they’d get away with this, the problem is have are the people buying this shit! This should’ve been enough to get people to just refuse to buy it but no.

    And the bigger problem isn’t what we know they can do, you have to think about what it ‘could’ do.

    Even if you never connect this stuff to the internet, they could still track all this stuff locally. Once that happens, which no doubt it will if not already, what happens if suddenly you get arrested for something, they confiscate the TV, download all the stuff tracked, and oops, something even more incriminating… maybe you watched an illiegal movie on jellyfin! 😲

    Look at all the “People will never let it happen” that has happened pretty much unchallenged… you’ll have no privacy, and you’ll all be paying for it!

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  • [–] 10 points 9 hours ago (1 child)

    The majority of people do not realize how much information is being recorded and what it’s used for. If there was an easy way to track down how a telemarketer got your information, a lot more people would freak out and demand change.

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  • [–] 17 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    The problem is not that people are buying this willingly, it's because they don't know. If you present them two rougly similar options, but one of them is a spying machine, people will choose the other one. This stuff should not be legal in the first place.

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  • [–] 5 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

    The problem's that what's presented is a cheap machine vs an expensive machine. Guess which one spies on you?

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  • [–] 10 points 15 hours ago (1 child)

    That's true, but the law should be the first line of defence against practices like this - you can't expect every person to do thorough research on every appliance they buy.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 hours ago

    Yeah, caveat emptor worked in an era where there were a lot of sellers and not that many ways to screw over customers, especially as most people weren't buying a wide range of products. I should be able to assume that my appliances aren't working against me, especially when it's becoming more difficult to purchase ones that don't

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    • [–] 72 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    "We own the glass, we own the TV, we own the living room. We know who is in an LG home." --LG President of Ads

    These are the Gamers Nexus videos these articles are referencing btw. Support them and their work. Get some cool shirts and physical media while you're at it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5KnFmKjFTA

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

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    [–] 9 points 18 hours ago

    There's no "might" here. It's why high-end TVs are cheap.

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    [–] 7 points 18 hours ago (1 child)

    Others do too

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    • [–] 34 points 1 day ago

    Fuck LG, this is creepy AF

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