The IT Nerd

Earlier this week, I posted a story about the issues that the Apple recommended LG UltraFine 5K Display has when it is within 2m of a WiFi router. It now looks like LG is going to do something about it. According to Recode, LG is going to fix the problem by inserting additional shielding into newly manufactured models, which should protect against the electromagnetic radiation from routers that is likely causing the issues. For the ones that are already in customers hands, they will have to reach out to LG to get those retrofitted.

That begs the question. Why wasn’t this caught prior to them being shipped to customers? I ask that because it really seems that LG seriously dropped the ball here. And Apple can’t escape taking some of the blame here as they recommend this monitor, thus you think they would have tried a couple of these out to see if they play nice when they are close to a WiFi router. After all that is a common scenario for users that you’d think that someone would have tested.

I am not a fan of Smart TVs as they have serious privacy issues. And to back that up, I cite these three examples of why you should not ever buy one. Now there’s another reason why you should not buy one, ever:

Darren Cauthon took to Twitter to reveal that his LG smart TV running Google TV was infected with malware when his family tried to install a movie streaming application. Judging from the photo he posted, this looks like a form of ransomware which requires him to pay to have access to the device restored.

But since the ransomware wasn’t necessarily developed for TVs, but for Android devices such as tablets and smartphones, it’s now completely bricked and no workaround seems to be able to restore it. Booting obviously leads to the same ransomware notification and other options are not available given the limited input on a TV.

Now here’s where it gets craptastic. When he went to LG for help, here’s what happened:

The only thing that could work, however, is flashing the stock firmware, which could only be possible with the firmware image provided by LG. Oddly enough, LG isn’t willing to help the owner remove the ransomware from his TV unless he pays, and according to his tweets, he could easily buy a new TV with the money that the company is asking for servicing.

The cost of removing the malware by flashing the stock firmware is $340, which, given the fact that this is an old TV running a platform that’s no longer supported, makes absolutely no sense.

Really? If I were LG, I’d be stepping up to help if for no other reason than to stop stories like this one from popping up on the Internet and generating bad press for them. Because that’s precisely what’s happening right now. Hopefully they step up and do the right thing if for no other reason to make this go away.

In the meantime, this shows that devices other than computers, phones and tablets can be pwned by hackers. Which is why I try to keep as many of my things from being on the Internet as possible. And that includes my TV.

UPDATE: Clearly bad press does make companies do things they normally wouldn’t do. Here’s proof of that:

In defense of @LGUS , they have contacted me and are taking a deeper look at the problem. Which I greatly appreciate!

— Darren Cauthon (@darrencauthon) December 28, 2016

And:

So @lgus has given me instructions on how to do the factory reset on the tv. I'll be trying it out after work… fingers crossed!

— Darren Cauthon (@darrencauthon) December 28, 2016

Let’s hope things work out for him.

UPDATE #2: He was able to rescue the TV thanks to the assistance of LG:

The TV is saved! Thanks to LG for providing the factory reset instructions. I recorded a YouTube video of the fix: https://t.co/6v7pYzbzqS pic.twitter.com/hV62r68uit

— Darren Cauthon (@darrencauthon) December 29, 2016

On Monday, CheckPoint found two flaws in LG phones that if used by someone with some amount of skill, can allow remote hijacking of the device. Here’s details from ZDNET:

Check Point mobile security researcher Adam Donenfeld said the first security weakness, CVE-2016-3117, was discovered in LG’s privileged service. Dubbed LGATCMDService, the service is not protected by bind permissions, which means that any application — regardless of its origins — can communicate with it.

“By connecting to this service, an attacker could address atd, a high-privileged user mode daemon and a gateway for communications with the firmware,” the researcher says.

If exploited, this could lead to privilege escalation and device hijacking, rebooting, disabling USB connections, wiping, identifying private IDs such as a device’s MAC address or completely bricking the device itself.

The second security flaw, CVE-2016-2035, lies within LG’s implementation of the WAP Push protocol. This protocol is used to send URLs to mobile devices through SMS messages, but due to LG’s implementation of the system, an SQL vulnerability is present.

Should an attacker compromise the device in this way, they could send an SMS message which allows them to view, modify or delete SMS messages stored on the device. Once compromised, this security flaw could also be used as a wider phishing scheme for more lucrative targets — such as a scam to access online bank accounts.

Patches should be out now to address these flaws, so you should be installing these patches if you own a LG phone. In the meantime, don’t download any apps via SMS to protect yourself.