Cybersecurity experts have been warning consumers for years that Smart TVs are vulnerable to hackers. Experts have also sounded the alarm about criminals using drones as flying hacking machines. At Defcon hacker conference security researcher Pedro Cabrera demonstrated the hacking capability of drones and the vulnerability of smart TVs. Cabrera proved this by using a DJI drone to hack the Smart TV due to the lack of authentication in the TV networks' communications.
In the video above, Cabrera shows a basic form of injection, by simply hovering a drone equipped with a software-defined radio near a TV antenna. With the equipment he can transmit a stronger signal than the one broadcasted by legitimate TV networks, overriding the valid signal and displaying his own video on the TV.
During his Defcon talk, Cabrera argued that hackers could compromise a TV station or its radio-signal repeater equipment. This would allow hackers to broadcast the malicious signal out to thousands of TVs. "This could have a very huge dimension," Cabrera says. "You can attack just one TV, your neighbor, for example, but we could also design this attack to cover a whole town, or even a whole country."
Drones are capable of carrying all kinds of payloads intent on hacking homes, businesses, or even data centers. A drone equipped with a smartphone, Raspberry Pi, Wifi Pineapple, or RFID reader can intercept, disrupt, and hack into data communications or servers.
Source: Wired
