{"id":6956,"date":"2017-03-13T10:30:17","date_gmt":"2017-03-13T18:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/13\/news-747\/"},"modified":"2017-03-13T10:30:17","modified_gmt":"2017-03-13T18:30:17","slug":"news-747","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/03\/13\/news-747\/","title":{"rendered":"Of course your TV\u2019s spying on you"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit to Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols| Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 10:22:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

Julian Assange, Wikileaks<\/a>\u2019 founder and Russian propagandist, must be proud of himself. In his latest \u201crevelation\u201d that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can hack Apple and Android smartphones, PC operating systems and smart TVs<\/a>, he has people throwing fits about how awful the CIA is. <\/p>\n

Please. Give me a break. <\/p>\n

Wikileaks uncovered nothing really new. Zero. Zilch. <\/p>\n

As my fellow Computerworld<\/em> writer buddy Mike Elgin said, \u201cThe Wikileaks\/CIA stories simply remind us anything with a camera, microphone or IP address could theoretically be hacked<\/a>.\u201d <\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t know that by now, you haven\u2019t been paying attention. <\/p>\n

Take smart TVs, for example. We\u2019ve known they were hackable<\/a> since they first showed up. Besides, some LG, Samsung and Vizio TV models have been snooping on you<\/a> for their makers for years. Heck, weeks before Wikileaks made its \u201cbig\u201d revelation, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) got Vizio to stop spying<\/a> on its customers. <\/p>\n

Some Wikileaks smart TV claims are theoretically possible but totally impractical. For example, one Wikileaks Samsung TV crack would require someone to break into your house<\/a>, load new TV firmware, and then come back to your home to recover the recorded data from a USB drive. If they\u2019re already in your house, I think just installing a good old-fashioned bug would be a better use of their time. <\/p>\n

All the CIA has done is take the same old ways of cracking your internet-connected gadgets that hackers have been using for years. Sometimes, they\u2019ve been refined. But new? Game-changing? No, I don\u2019t think so. <\/p>\n

Besides, you have bigger worries. Your Amazon Echo, Google Home<\/a>, Windows 10 Cortana<\/a> and all the other voice-activated devices and services in your office and home are already listening in to you. Indeed, Amazon recently agreed to hand over an Echo\u2019s audio recording in a murder case<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Why should someone pick your lock when you\u2019re already streaming anything you say to a high-tech company? I mean, we live in a world where smart teddy bears are recording your toddler\u2019s babbling<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But why bother to listen? If you\u2019re already blabbing every move you make on Facebook, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube, you\u2019re already telling the world what you\u2019re doing. <\/p>\n

Oh, and Snapchat and other services that make your pictures and other records disappear? If you believe that, you probably bought Snapchat\u2019s insanely priced stock<\/a>! A few years back, Snapchat was caught red-handed keeping your photos<\/a>. More recently, Snapchat added Memories<\/a>, a built-in archiving feature. I wouldn\u2019t count on your Snapchat photos disappearing, if I were you \u2014 until the company goes under, if then. <\/p>\n

In short, I hate to break it to you, but if you\u2019re online and revealing personal information, you\u2019re opening yourself up for attacks. <\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t bother me \u2026 much. I lead a public life. But with the U.S. government asking foreign travelers for their social network passwords<\/a>, I\u2019m reminded that anything you say online can be held against you. <\/p>\n

Some people also seem upset because the CIA was \u2014 gasp! \u2014 spying on people. Hello! That\u2019s their job. As my friend and security expert Violet Blue said, \u201cSpies gotta spy.\u201d<\/a> It\u2019s what they do. <\/p>\n

Let me break this down for you. If you use any internet-connected device, especially internet of things (IoT) devices<\/a>, you\u2019re potentially a target. If you use any social network, you\u2019re a target. If you\u2019re alive in the 21st<\/sup> century and you\u2019re online, you\u2019re \u2014 guess what \u2014 a target. <\/p>\n

Is the CIA or NSA going to come after you? No, almost certainly not. But, Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., etc., already are. And hackers, you can be certain, will be trying their best to intercept all your data. The CIA is just one more group making the most of today\u2019s privacy-adverse world. <\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/category\/security\/index.rss<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols| Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2017 10:22:00 -0700<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
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Julian Assange, Wikileaks<\/a>\u2019 founder and Russian propagandist, must be proud of himself. In his latest \u201crevelation\u201d that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) can hack Apple and Android smartphones, PC operating systems and smart TVs<\/a>, he has people throwing fits about how awful the CIA is.<\/p>\n

Please. Give me a break.<\/p>\n

Wikileaks uncovered nothing really new. Zero. Zilch.<\/p>\n

As my fellow Computerworld<\/em> writer buddy Mike Elgin said, \u201cThe Wikileaks\/CIA stories simply remind us anything with a camera, microphone or IP address could theoretically be hacked<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[11062,10643],"tags":[11072,11063,6269,714],"class_list":["post-6956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computerworld","category-independent","tag-cybercrime-hacking","tag-data-privacy","tag-internet-of-things","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}