A fellow named Rafael Scheel recently published some interesting research about hacking smart TVs. He discovered a way to use $150 worth of radio transmitter equipment to send signals to a smart TV. He combined this with a couple of other exploits (one involving the Adobe Flash player, one involving JavaScript, both supported by the web browser on the TV) to load malware on the TV.
Scheel’s attack in interesting, because it doesn’t require physical access to the TV, it’s virtually undetectable, and it’s very hard to remediate once exploited.
Imagine your book’s character parking her car outside her target’s business or residence, turning on her laptop, attaching a special transmitter, and tricking all the smart TVs in the area to upload an exploit. Then she could do any of several things:
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use the TV’s wireless connection to attack other targets on the same network
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join the TVs to a botnet to attack a web site
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mine some bitcoins
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capture audio using the TV’s voice control feature
Smart TVs are probably like most Internet of Things (IoT) devices. The manufacturer happily staples on all these features to add value but then falls short in addressing security problems discovered later. Have you ever heard of anyone applying a firmware update to a TV? My TVs are a few years old, making them somewhat antiquated. So maybe TV firmware updates are commonplace, but somehow I doubt it.
Do you have a smart TV? Is it connected to the internet?
Carl Welch: Writing Tech 