The British Developer and blogger DoctorBeet, announced to have discovered that his LG Smart TV is sending data about his family’s viewing habits back to the South Korean manufacturer.one year ago we discussed about the possibility to exploit a vulnerability in Samsung Smart TV to penetrate our domestic network to spy on us or to serve a malware.
The LG Smart TV, model LG 42LN575V, sends data back to LG servers, which advertisers can use to see when it best to target their products at the most suitable audience. The developer has disabled the option “Collection of watching info” in the TV settings menu.
The Smart TV sends back to a non-functional URL information on channels being watched and time of vision, but the most concerning thing is that the device also collect and send to LG file names of some media on a USB device connected to the TV.
To test the anomalous behavior DoctorBeet created a mock video file which he transferred to a USB stick, he named the file Midget_Porn_2013.avi that couldn't possibly be confused with the TV set’s firmware. Once connected the USB to the Smart TV he verified that the file name had been transmitted in clear text to GB.smartshare.lgtvsdp.com.
DoctorBeet noted that the URL contacted by the Smart TV with a POST requests doesn't exist, for this reason he received HTTP 404 responses from LG’s server after the ACK. LG Smart Ad collects and analyzes users’ favorite programs, online behavior, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences.
DoctorBeet decided to contact LG that replied that the behavior respects the Terms and Conditions for the Smart TV, the company also suggested that he take up the issue with the retailer who sold him the set.
DoctorBeet closes the post suggesting how to stop data transmission, he has identified and blocked 7 domains used to collect users’ data:
The LG Smart TV, model LG 42LN575V, sends data back to LG servers, which advertisers can use to see when it best to target their products at the most suitable audience. The developer has disabled the option “Collection of watching info” in the TV settings menu.The Smart TV sends back to a non-functional URL information on channels being watched and time of vision, but the most concerning thing is that the device also collect and send to LG file names of some media on a USB device connected to the TV.
To test the anomalous behavior DoctorBeet created a mock video file which he transferred to a USB stick, he named the file Midget_Porn_2013.avi that couldn't possibly be confused with the TV set’s firmware. Once connected the USB to the Smart TV he verified that the file name had been transmitted in clear text to GB.smartshare.lgtvsdp.com.
DoctorBeet noted that the URL contacted by the Smart TV with a POST requests doesn't exist, for this reason he received HTTP 404 responses from LG’s server after the ACK. LG Smart Ad collects and analyzes users’ favorite programs, online behavior, search keywords and other information to offer relevant ads to target audiences.
DoctorBeet decided to contact LG that replied that the behavior respects the Terms and Conditions for the Smart TV, the company also suggested that he take up the issue with the retailer who sold him the set.
DoctorBeet closes the post suggesting how to stop data transmission, he has identified and blocked 7 domains used to collect users’ data:
- ad.lgappstv.com
- yumenetworks.com
- smartclip.net
- smartclip.com
- smartshare.lgtvsdp.com
- ibis.lgappstv.com
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