An investigation of Gamers Nexus has put under scrutiny the information collected by smart TVs LG and the possibilities they offer to an attacker to listen to their owners. Tests show that these devices can preserve transcripts of user conversations and detect other devices in the home. Also that it is possible to use them to record while in standby modealthough this last practice requires prior intervention in your software.
The YouTube channel has worked with Level1Techs and independent security researchers to analyze televisions OLED of LG purchased in stores. As they explain in the video, they examined both the functions incorporated by the manufacturer as well as the vulnerabilities that would allow its behavior to be altered. This distinction is essential to understand what information they collect during their regular use and what someone who manages to control them could obtain.
To study ordinary data collection, the researchers analyzed the televisions’ communications with the Internet and their activity within the home network. They detected searches for other connected devices, such as phones and smart watches, plus location logs and information about nearby Wi-Fi networks. The Verge points out that this data feeds the advertising business of LG Ad Solutions.
The devices also use the automatic content recognitionknown by the acronym ACRto identify what the user is viewing. This system takes image and sound samples and transforms them into fingerprints that allow recognize the contents. Its scope includes TV applications and signals received by HDMIso you can also analyze what is played from external devices.
The discovery related to the conversations occurred after activate voice recognition features. During a test, one of the participants gave a voice command while two others chatted behind the television. The device continued listening for several minutes and picked up words that were not directed at it.. The researchers found transcripts of these types of conversations in internal log files.
In another part of the research, Gamers Nexus demonstrated that it was possible to record users even when the television was in standby mode. To achieve this, the team obtained privileged access to the system through a procedure known as rootwhich allows you to modify its operation. From that access they managed Capture audio from microphones and use TV as a listening device while screen was off. They were also able to store recordings offline and retrieve them when resetting the network. This shows a possibility of espionage through a compromised devicebut it does not prove that LG regularly records conversations at rest.
LG assured TechRadar last July that their televisions do not record or store ambient conversations and that voice recognition only processes data when the user activates it to make a request. Gamers Nexus believes that capturing background conversations dismantles that explanation.
In any case, it is not the first time that Gamers Nexus takes the colors of LG. In July, the channel reported that some monitors automatically installed an app that collected data from your computer and displayed pop-up ads of LG products and antivirus McAfee. The pressure generated by that investigation led to the intervention of Microsoft and ended up leading LG to disable those ads.