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Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1154153
How Safe Is Your Smart TV? Samsung Takes Heat For Advising Smart TV Security By Securemac.com Do you ever stop, look around the store, and wonder... does everything need to be an Internet of Things thing? The risks are real, and it's growing more common for the average user to experience some problem with their IoT devices — or at least they face a heightened risk of digital intrusions. Samsung took some heat on Twitter recently as a result of a proactive attempt to point out that, hey — if you connect your TV to the Internet, you're potentially at risk. What'd they do? Nothing major — in fact, it seems straightforward. The tweet, which Samsung later deleted, read in part: "Prevent malicious software attacks on your TV by scanning for viruses on your TV every few weeks." The tweet also included a helpful link to a tutorial for how to access the built-in virus scanner on the TV to check for any unwanted visitors. We have to give some props to Samsung for promoting best practices here; "scan your TV for viruses" is not something most people would think about or even consider, yet when the manufacturer points it out, it can do a lot to raise awareness surrounding the issue. That's important because the potential dangers posed by compromised IoT devices are numerous. The Verge reported on some of those dangers in a recent piece, such as the CIA-developed "Weeping Angel" software that could allegedly exploit flaws within Samsung TVs to turn them into listening bugs, picking up conversations in the same room as the TV set. That revelation led researchers to take a more in-depth look at the software powering Samsung TVs, and ultimately revealed dozens of serious and exploitable zero-day flaws that hackers could use to make inroads for running their own code on the unit. This all happened back in 2017, and