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Remember when limited bandwidth was a huge problem? Then bandwidth was infinite. TV-based botnets? DoS attacks on your fridge? More plausible than you think. It's still premature to say you need firewall or antivirus protection for your television set, but a duo of recently diagnosed firmware vulnerabilities in widely used TV models made by two leading manufacturers suggests the notion isn't as far-fetched as many may think.
The most recent bug, found in a wide range of high-definition TVs from Samsung, was disclosed on Thursday by Luigi Auriemma, an Italy-based researcher who regularly finds security flaws in Microsoft Windows, video games, and even the industrial-strength systems used to control dams, gas refineries, and other critical infrastructure. While poking around a Samsung D6000 model belonging to his brother, he inadvertently discovered a way to remotely send the TV into an endless restart mode that persists even after unplugging the device and turning it back on.
Auriemma said he sees no reason the attack couldn't be carried out over the Internet if the TV had a public IP address and used no filters. Week in tech: copyrighted magic, System Guide, ChromeOS, and Oracle v. Google.