Smart TVs, satellites, and billboards all hacked in Ukrainian war

The ongoing conflict between Russian and the Ukraine has shown the increasing sophistication of state-sponsored hackers and the casualties of war have included some surprising victims. Dr Kenneth Geers, senior research scientist at Comodo and coauthor of a NATO-funded study into the conflict, told delegates at the Black Hat …

[Anonymous Coward]

Another reason to shun Smart TV...???

* Your TV is easily hijackable by guerrilla armies / scammers / hackers.

* Ads / Slurping. Even if you disable via Yahoo T&C, features get disabled.

* Not smart to buy smart as a PC replacement as Apps get dropped (Skype)...

[dmesg]

WMDs

"There is no question cyberwar exists, but whether it rises to being a weapon of mass distraction ... "

You mean, like Facebook?

Mine's the one with a smartphone in the pocket ... no, not that one ... or that ... or ... aw, stuff it. Just keep the damn thing and I'll nap on the ride home.

[Alistair]

digital billboards

at construction sites in our area seem to have truly lousy security.

http://globalnews.ca/news/2096219/hacked-roadworks-sign-gives-commuters-a-good-laugh/

http://www.fox4news.com/news/150032765-story

< WARNING FOX NEWS LINK click with caution and reality filters on please >

I don't imagine that overall security of this type of device is that great. I suspect that the management of the devices is made as simple as possible, and as such is likely easy to violate. I can see things like this managing to be used to cause issues within a general population, by distributing misinformation, misdirecting volumes of traffic flow about etc. Not sure what else could be done with those.

Youtube is quite the misinformation zone, as is facebook and other things of that ilk. But (see the fox news note above) most modern, popular media are full of equal amounts of crap. And since we've removed *logical thought* from the edumastraction system in most of the western world, THAT becomes a problem. Hopefully there are enough of us about with clue by fours when the airborne fecal matter impacts the rotary aeration devices.

As for hacking infrastructure for military purposes I *rather* suspect that *both* sides will be all over that in any conflict, just so that they can propagandise the results, either way. (i would NOT put it past the military in any western country to have back doors into the critical infrastructures of their locale already). Given that the US already has a cyber military command centre, I'm not surprised that NATO validated its existence.

</considers creating a "snopes" bunker for the coming downfall of civilization, something like the Motie museums>

[ma1010]

Re: digital billboards

I think you may be going a bit Crazy Eddie. Well, maybe not as long as you realize there is no halting the downfall of civilization as we know it.

Obligatory Dilbert Cartoon here.

[Deltics]

The real crime here is the extent to which the world has collectively moved on from what's going on in Ukraine and if it is mentioned at all it is as a past event.

[Andrew Jones 2]

I've been arguing for the last few years - the chances are - we are beyond Nuclear weapons now. The next World War will be fought online. Because of our reliance on Technology - targeting the banking network and the communications networks will bring a civilised country to it's knees. If the ATMs don't work and the ePOS card readers don't work, you are left relying on physical cash - and I doubt I'm the only one who only has a small amount of physical cash handy, relying on the bit of plastic far more than perhaps I should. Largely as a civilised society we overlook all the technology that works - while it is working, we only notice how complicated and interconnected things are when they stop working. We don't care how the channel list on the Sky box stays up-to-date as long as it does, but if someone wanted to hack the Astra 2E/F/whatever-letter-it-has-now satellite to add a channel - or remove every channel except the propaganda channel, that's do-able. If someone wanted to instruct the Sky boxes to delete all recorded programmes - that's do-able. The chances are because a satellite is involved - moving the chances of an attack out of the range of more typical script kiddies - security is probably not the most sophisticated. The banking network obviously would be a more difficult target, but DDoS would probably be possible. I don't profess to know enough about the infrastructure of the mobile network(s) to understand how feasible an attack against the infrastructure is, but hypothetically speaking - I'd imagine it would be safe to assume that any system that is open to being managed remotely, is also possible to exploit.

It might all be hypothetical right now, it may even not be possible right now, but I think someone somewhere should note that eventually - it will happen, and it's probably a good time to think about how to defend an attack against the system.