Security News > 2020 > October > Comcast TV Remote Hack Opens Homes to Snooping

A security flaw allowing attackers to remotely snoop in on victims' private conversations was found to stem from an unexpected device - their TV remotes.

The flaw stems from Comcast's XR11, a popular voice-activated remote control for cable TV, which has more than 18 million units deployed across the U.S. The remote enables users to say the channel or content they want to watch rather than keying in the channel number or typing to search.

"Few people think of their television remote controls as 'connected devices,' fewer still would guess that they can be vulnerable to attackers, and almost no one would imagine that they can jeopardize their privacy," said researchers with Guardicore, in a Wednesday post.

"WarezTheRemote used a man-in-the-middle attack to exploit remote's RF communication with the set-top box and over-the-air firmware upgrades - by pushing a malicious firmware image back the remote, attackers could have used the remote to continuously record audio without user interaction," they said.

The order these chunk requests are sent in is entirely predictable - meaning attackers can easily guess which chunk of the firmware the remote is asking for.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/comcast-tv-remote-homes-snooping/159899/