I’m being bombarded with queries about Samsung “Smart TVs” being used as bugs by the CIA, as discussed in the new WikiLeaks data dump.
I’m not in a position to write up anything lengthy about this right now, but there is a simple solution to the entire “smart TV as bug” category of concerns — don’t buy those TVs, and if you have one, don’t connect it to the Internet directly.
Don’t associate it with your Wi-Fi network — don’t plug it into your Ethernet.
Buy a Chromecast or Roku or similar dongle that will provide your Internet programming connectivity via HDMI to that television — these dongles don’t include microphones and are dirt cheap compared to the price of the TV itself.
In general, so-called smart TVs are not a good buy even when they’re not acting as bugs.
Now, seriously paranoid readers might ask “Well, what if the spooks are subverting both my smart TV and my external dongle? Couldn’t they somehow route the audio from the TV microphone back out to the Internet through hacked firmware in the dongles?”
The answer is theoretically yes, but it’s a significantly tougher lift for a number of technical reasons. The solution though even for that scenario is simple — kill the power to the dongle when you’re not using it.
Unplug it from the TV USB jack if you’re powering it that way (I mean, if you’re paranoid, you might consider the possibility that the hacked TV firmware is still supplying power to the dongle even when it’s supposed to be off, and that the dongle has been hacked to not light its power LED in that situation, eh?)
But if you’re powering the dongle from a wall adapter, and you unplug that, you’ve pretty much ended that ballgame.
–Lauren–