It was recently discovered by security researchers that the data Samsung’s smart TVs were transmitting back to servers was totally unencrypted. This came after the controversy surrounding Samsung’s privacy policy for smart TVs which essentially told users that they should refrain from discussing sensitive information in from of the television as it might pick that up. At that time Samsung said that it was only the older smart TV sets that were doing this and that newer sets were encrypting data before sending it. This has been proven false.
The original test that Pentest Partners conducted was on a UE46ES8000, which was a top-end smart TV model, but two years back. For this test they went with the UE55HU7500, which became available in mid-2014, and happens to be widely available from numerous retailers.
Pentest Partners tested this Samsung smart TV model they same way they did the previous one and found that data is still not being encrypted before it is sent to the servers. Data is sent in plaintext.
Given that the TV set has been shipping for several months one can expect that the latest software update would fix things. Think again. The team applied the latest update and still the data was not encrypted.
Samsung has not yet commented on this new report.
Filed in . Read more about Samsung and smart TVs. Source: extremetech