A smart TV, also known as a connected TV, is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features, which allows users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart TV is a technological convergence of computers, television sets, and set-top boxes. To easily understand it, Smart TVs are a television just like your phone and laptop, and they are vulnerable to the same kind of threats. If security holes exist in a smart TV, it is only a matter of time before hackers find a way to break in and control it.

According to the news by James Gelinas, KOMANDO.COM. Last year, the FBI warned that hackers could use unsecured smart TVs as a backdoor into your network. In 2020, the risks are even more obvious. One of the most popular smart TV brands has a critical flaw in its operating system that gives a hacker full access to the system’s back end. All they need to know is the TV’s IP address.

White-hat hacker finds a critical flaw in TCL smart TVs

Millions of TCL Android smart TVs are at risk for hacking thanks to a flaw found by a security researcher from Sick.Codes. The flaw involves open networking ports in the smart TV’s back-end, which hackers can scan to gain access without you knowing. If a hacker scans the ports, they can learn the TV’s IP addresses and see its hidden files with an ordinary web browser.

After testing different IP addresses, the researcher came upon http://10.0.0.117:7989/sdcard. This page let him see critical system files stored on the TV’s memory card, and none of them had any form of protection. With enough of time, a hacker could rewrite code on the smart TV, inject malicious files or disable it altogether. The researcher forwarded his findings to TCL, and it took 13 days for the company to get back to him.

TCL responded and claimed to have fixed the issue, but the researcher decided to dig even further. He found that while TCL did alter some of the TV’s most critical files, all of them could still be edited by any user with access to the file system.

TCL is the world’s third-largest TV manufacturer. Millions of the company’s smart TVs could be at risk for hacking or intrusion with no way to protect against it. There is no word whether or not a new security update will be released for the bug.

BitCherry IPv8 Technology redefined IP Security & Privacy

To address these issues, the blockchain project BitCherry was the one who first proposed, the blockchain network protocol built on top of IPv8 Technology and defines it as P2P + to enhance the IP security & privacy. BitCherry IPv8 works in the lower IP network layer and data link layer, which it can work at the host and router at the same time, because IPv8 uses 8-byte network address for addressing and works on the protocol layer which is lower and closer to the hardware device compare to IPv4 and IPv6, 4 and 6 bytes. Therefore, IPv8 can easily penetrate any network, firewall, network wall etc. To easily understand it, with the implementation of IPv8, virtual private network (VPN), proxy server and so on are no longer needed, and IPv8 can express more abundant network target address information.

The additional 2 bytes from IPv8 compare to IPv6 we can easily to understand are one byte is mainly used to express the shortest network path gateway service information between source address to target address to realize decentralized and other one byte will use to the high-speed interconnection and interworking between different networks.

Different from the traditional P2P network protocol. To ensure the security & privacy of network transmission and prevent the gateway node from doing evil things, BitCherry’s P2P plus network protocol implements point-to-point encryption. Although digital signature technology is used to ensure that the transmission content will be unalterable with, but it does not have the function of confidentiality and privacy protection.

In conclusion, we believe there will be more new secure technologies that will build with BitCherry IPv8 for a most secure and privacy environment.  The release of IPv8 and BitCherry will work together to implement the upgrade of the security and privacy of Internet. Let us look forward a whole new safety internet to the arrival of IPv8 together!