LG smart TV snooping extends to home networks, second blogger says
A second blogger has published evidence that his LG-manufactured smart television is sharing sensitive user data with the Korea-based company in a post that offers support for the theory that the snooping isn't isolated behavior that affects a small number of sets.
In addition to transmitting a list of shows being watched and the names of files contained on USB drives, the Internet-connected TV also sent the names of files shared on home or office networks, the blogger reported. He made the discovery after plugging the Wireshark packet-sniffing program into his home network and noticing that an LG TV—model number 42ls570, purchased in April—was transmitting file names that sounded vaguely familiar even though there was no USB drive plugged in.
"It turns out it was pulling filenames from my shared folders over the network and broadcasting those instead," he wrote in a blog post published Thursday. "I moved all the media out of the folder and put a few duds in named 'GiantPorn,' turned the TV off and on and it was still broadcasting the old filenames. The TV couldn't see those files whilst browsing manually so I'd hazard a guess it’s caching some of these locally."
Within about 10 minutes, voilà. The name of the GiantPorn MPEG file was transmitted to 193.67.216.135, an IP address belonging to LG Electronics, according to Whois records.
Mark, a Web developer who asked Ars not to publish his last name, said he also noticed that his TV sent an authorization code to LG as soon as he turned it on and a deauthorization code each time he turned it off.
"I'm not sure how unusual this practice is, but it gives LG a pretty precise measurement of when and how long you are using the TV," he wrote.
As was the case with the previous blogger, the HTTP POST requests containing file names that Mark observed returned a 404 error typically used to indicate that a requested file wasn't found at a specified address. That could indicate the file information the smart TVs are sending wasn't received, but that's by no means certain since it's trivial for that information to be logged even when such errors are broadcast. And even if the data isn't currently being received for whatever reason, the packet captures provide almost irrefutable proof that the data is being sent to LG servers, whether or not they're actually accepting it. With minor fuss, those servers can be tweaked to permanently log the data.
What's more, since LG TVs are sending the data unencrypted, it's trivial for anyone on the same home or office network to monitor the communications. That data is similarly available to anyone who has the ability to monitor communications sent over the larger Internet.
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