Your smart TV may prey for hackers and collecting more info than you realize, Consumer Reports warns
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Yeah, this imo is bogus. If you can get onto my network in the first place everything just became vulnerable. Using this methods is just a tiny step up from using a universal remote from outside the house.
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I’m confused…the article touts that tons of “personal, private information is being collected and available to hacking” but they never call out what that data is. And if they’re speaking about what shows you watch, then I would be curious to see how many hacks have actually gone after that data and what hackers would do with it. I don’t see a huge market on the dark web for my TV viewing history. And as far as “vulnerable to attack”…so, someone can crank up the volume or change the channel. SO WHAT!!! This is just click-bait BS. I’m disappointed in you Consumer Reports. But then again, they have to do something to stay viable in the digital age when there are 1001 reviews of every item sold.
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This is total clickbait BS.
No one has these devices sitting ON the internet. They’re all sitting behind a NAT home router which pretty much mean they’re safe.
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Not entirely true … there are exploits against a number of the more popular routers to bypass NAT … NAT is far from a network panacea
Another thing people can (and should) do - segment their internal home networks … all the IoT stuff goes on one VLAN all the other important stuff on another VLAN and do not let them cross communicate … if you have a security system in the mix - put that on yet another VLAN …
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How do you bypass a NAT when you have no idea what’s behind it?
And no home user has any idea what a VLAN is…
You use what DOES know what is behind the NAT - the Router itself… there are many exploits for owning consumer grade routers …
As for VLANs if you can put together a WebCore piston, you can configure VLANs
Well if someone is already in your network through some other exploit, then nothing is safe. Short of some multi-layer hack to steal your viewing habits from your smart TV, my point still stands that devices behind a NAT are safe.
Lets agree to disagree on what we each think is “safe” perhaps my definition and expectation is higher than yours /shrug
Ultimately, each person needs to determine their own level of giveadamn for their IoT deployments and the potential impacts to their environment - it would appear that I have a higher giveadamn than you - not a value judgement - but I do not trust NAT alone - I prefer defense in depth with belts and suspenders 
Nothing is safe. Some things are safe-ish.
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The articles are clickbait man. It’s not an article about how to exploit routers, its about attempting to exploit devices protected behind a NAT firewall. But you’re welcome to explain how you could directly connect to and exploit my NAT’d smart TV.
If someone wants to waste their time to hack my router to on the off chance my tv is on at the time so that they can change the channel on me…well then that person needs to get a life. Think about it practically for a second. We’re not talking getting access to credit card info or passwords or anything that is actually valuable to hackers.
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