TV hacks: New front in info-wars
When news broke at the weekend that hackers had taken control of TV feeds in Wenzhou China and streamed anti-communist slogans to millions of viewers, security researcher Rahul Sasi wasn’t surprised.
Sasi, who is based in India, presented at security conference Hack in the Box earlier this year. He noted plenty of “low-hanging fruit” vulnerabilities that would allow a hacker to ferret his or her way in to a cable system through Internet-connected features such as middleware billing services, he said. Those hackers could interrupt the broadcast stream of TV stations and replace it with other content. While few such hacks have been reported, Sasi told MC he expects more to come as digital cable creates more links between household TVs and the Internet and as hackers look for new ways to manipulate public knowledge.
