Security News

Samsung brags to advertisers that "First screen ads", seen by all users of its Smart TVs when they turn on, are 100 per cent viewable, audience targeted, and seen 400 times per TV per month. "Dear Samsung, why are you showing Ads on my Smart TV without my consent? I didn't agree to this in the privacy settings but I keep on getting this, why?" said a user on Samsung's TV forum, adding last week that "There is no mention of advertising on any of their brand new boxes".

Phunware announced that Cisco Meraki will now feature the Company's Smart Workplace solution for employers in its Meraki Marketplace. Cisco Systems acquired Meraki in 2012, and today, Cisco Meraki is a leader in cloud controlled WiFi, routing and security, all managed from a centralized dashboard.

IoT gateways are becoming an increasingly important link in the IoT security and device authentication value chain and emerging as a crucial conduit for intelligent operations across the entire IoT. The new wave of next-generation smart IoT gateways has arrived at an opportune time, enabling a breadth of novel security, intelligence, and authentication operations at the edge, causing IoT vendors to revisit their deployment and management strategies. According to ABI Research, there will be 21.4 million next-gen smart IoT gateways shipped in 2025.

Enabling customers to design and build solutions for a variety of smart video workloads, Western Digital announced its expanded family of WD Purple storage solutions, including the industry's highest capacity 18TB surveillance HDD for DVRs, NVRs and analytics appliances, and the 1TB WD Purple SC QD101 microSD card for AI-enabled cameras. Setting the bar for smart video applications, all WD Purple drives are optimized to help reduce frame loss and pixelation, improve overall video playback and enhance streaming for 24×7 workloads - from ingest to backup and long-term storage - as the industry broadens the use of deep learning and analytics.

Lattice helps developers meet this growing demand for embedded and smart vision applications by offering a variety of low-power FPGAs and comprehensive solutions stacks designed to enable the quick and easy implementation of applications like video signal bridging, aggregation and splitting, image processing, and the AI/ML inferencing used to train smart vision models. "Peiju Chiang, Product Marketing Manager at Lattice, said,"Lattice is a leading provider of innovative, low power solutions for smart and embedded vision applications.

The FBI is worried that Ring doorbell owners can use footage collected from their smart devices to keep tabs on police, newly uncovered documents show. The FBI document outlines how Ring surveillance footage could present new "Challenges" for law enforcement.

The burgeoning smart home device market has given rise to digital intrusion and potential energy market manipulation on a massive scale. By 2025, it's been estimated that there will be 481 million smart homes worldwide, according to a Statista's 2020 Digital Market Outlook.

Zoom announced that Zoom for Home is expanding to smart displays including Amazon Echo Show, Portal from Facebook, and Google Nest Hub Max, bringing Zoom to widely-used devices and broadening their capabilities to the work environment. Zoom on Portal is expected to be available publicly in September; Zoom on Echo Show and Zoom on Assistant-enabled Smart Displays, including Google Nest Hub Max are expected to be available by the end of the year.

Vulnerabilities in HDL Automation smart products could be abused to take over user accounts and remotely control devices deployed in homes, commercial buildings or hotels, SentinelOne reports. The issues, SentinelOne researcher Barak Sternberg explained at the DEF CON conference last week, were identified in an HDL automation system that allows users to control various smart devices within residential, commercial and hospitality environments.

After Google Home users started receiving mysterious alerts when their fire alarms went off or their plates smashed in their homes, Google acknowledged that it accidentally rolled out a feature causing the smart devices to record sounds without the voice prompt. Google for its part said that the alerts are part of a subscription service called "Nest Aware," first launched in May. As part of this service, users of Google cameras, speakers and displays can pay for the devices to detect any "Critical" sound in their home and send them an alert on their phones while they are away from their homes.