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Comment by oceansky | Hacker News Reader

The title undersells it.

The TV has multiple mics that can't be disabled, they constantly record everything and upload transcripts in plain text.

It gathers data and metadata of all devices on the network, including IP addresses. And even analyzes network data to understand which applications are being run.

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Did the video actually say this? I scrubbed through and found it interesting, but from what I gathered, microphones were only activated when AI voice input was used. Granted, there was no investigation on how trigger happy the beginning of recording might actually be. Did I misinterpret?

I haven’t watched it all yet, but I believe they discuss an RCE vulnerability where an attacker can permanently monitor the mics?

Not only that. If shows that it does capture lots of ambiance conversations and switching microphone recording to be easily. Also there is a scare bit that they show an almost silent stream of audio actually contains audible conversation. Why was it even recording?

The "own the glass" thing is the most consumer disrespect I have heard in a while. They claim they own the TV and YOUR LIVING ROOM.

They know they are invading your privacy, they know the make it fricking hard for you to be able to disable it. They are pyschos. I'm ditching buying LG forever

> They are psychos

Totally and absolutely, and seemingly proud of it. Just gross.

But weren't most recordings manually started in the video? Either through the UI, or via the root access they have?

I might be missing something here, but I did not see the TV automatically recording stuff by itself (or them showing it is transmitted somewhere) without a visible UI element showing that the microphone is active.

It seems that they turned the TV into a wiretap via root. That is a concern and might give some lessons for LG that they need to invest more into security of their devices (privacy indicators, attested boot, anti-root / anti-persistence measures, hard-shutting off the microphone without privacy indicators)...

But you can pull of similar attacks with a compromised laptop / computer or smartphone.

Of course, it's a TV, why does it need that stuff? Still though, I think the video itself is a bit misleading that it claims (or many people think) it automatically records and transmits all this stuff, while this was not shown here (unless I miss something).

My takeaway was just that the root access gave them the ability to find out what was being recorded, and they were able to play back recordings that it made.

It didn't appear to me that they were initiating anything.

You can see them running "nohup arecord" in the video.

Yes you are right, but also they showed how frequently the TV would trigger the voice recognition and how poorly secure it is.

I think GN did a poor job on splitting the capabilities Vs the problems so it got a bit confuse.

But my takeaway is that this is a easy to hack tv with good enough microphones that has almost none privacy filters.

Anyway, same as other, I might be wrong

It did. This was basically all in the first 10-15 minutes.

Imagine the amount of power they have now with AI, by recording the conversations of half the planet. Imagine the amount of money they would be able to make in the stock market with this data, by following the trends of these conversations. I'm sure the hedge funds have already been doing this for 20 years.

That's really just the tip of the iceberg though. They'll be able to build very sophisticated models of every person, digitally fingerprinted to their voice and location and devices that follows them forever.

I want my data deleted from their servers. This is seriously messed up and heads need to roll.

This should be grounds for a class-action lawsuit. It’s lying, it’s scummy, it’s an abuse of consumer trust, and it’s written off LG as a company to do business with. I’m surprised we aren’t already seeing DPAs in the EU take on LG.

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