LG TV shown scanning LAN for third-party phones and other devices - Ars Technica
“This is the TV’s native functionality. In its statement, LG said that “to provide smart TV functionalities, LG TVs feature the ability to scan for and connect to nearby devices on the same network.” “This is a standard function commonly provided by smart TVs and smart home devices,” LG’s statement reads. The video also demonstrated an LG TV’s ability to record sound around it, even when the TV isn’t online.
“It doesn’t cost a lot to store text forever.”
LG TVs are facing scrutiny due to a video seemingly showing the devices’ capability to track users when the TVs are off.
YouTube channel Gamers Nexus worked with Level1Techs, a technology-focused YouTube channel, and security researchers to analyze LG TVs’ tracking capabilities. They shared packet captures that pointed to the TVs, including LG’s pricey G5 OLED TV, scanning the LAN for other devices.
“The [G5] crawled our entire network and found dozens of unrelated devices, including smartwatches and phones of our staff who didn’t even know we were working on this,” Steve Burke, Gamers Nexus’ editor-in-chief, said.
LG’s ad business, LG Ad Solutions, has said in recent marketing materials that it can reach 363 million “addressable secondary devices” in the US.
When reached for comment, a company representative shared a statement from LG Electronics via email:
LG TVs can identify compatible devices on the same network to enable features such as device connectivity, content sharing or smart home functionality.
The YouTube channel used Wireshark, a network protocol analyzer tool, and inspected the TV’s firmware and found that LG TVs “are capable of identifying your IP address, geographic location, name of every Wi-Fi network in the vicinity and signal strength, channel numbers of neighboring Wi-Fi networks in range, and other devices on the network, even if not connected to the TV in any way, and the internal IP address of other devices on the network, alongside others.”
It’s unclear if LG TVs use this functionality for any purposes beyond advertising, such as diagnostics, or if this information is all sent to LG. It remains concerning, however, that devices with this technology are sitting in unsuspecting owners’ homes.
“This is the TV’s native functionality. This didn’t require vulnerabilities,” Burke noted.
In its statement, LG said that “to provide smart TV functionalities, LG TVs feature the ability to scan for and connect to nearby devices on the same network.”
“This is a standard function commonly provided by smart TVs and smart home devices,” LG’s statement reads.
Burke pointed out that “even using an LG smart TV as a dumb monitor doesn’t necessarily stop all of the functionality we’re talking about today,” while pointing to broader implications for non-LG smart TVs. He explained further:
Internet service providers sometimes have dual SSIDs that include open neighborhood Wi-Fi broadcast from customer routers, such as with Comcast’s Xfinity neighborhood hotspot and AT&T’s public hotspots, which are sometimes autoconnected to by devices when they discover the open network, such as in an apartment building from neighbors using such routers. So this is a concern broadly speaking and future looking for smart TVs regardless of the brand.
The video also demonstrated an LG TV’s ability to record sound around it, even when the TV isn’t online.
“We were even able to capture microphone audio while the TV was unplugged from the network. Burke said the audio was reportedly stored locally via plaintext, which could potentially allow the data to be sent to LG [if] the TV connects online again.”
Level1Techs’ representative, Wendell Wilson, noted that “it doesn’t cost a lot to store text forever.”
In response to these claims, LG’s statement said:
When the TV is in standby mode and appears to be turned off, it only monitors for the wake word if you have previously enabled the Far-Field feature. If no wake word is detected, the audio used for wake word detection is processed locally on the TV, promptly deleted, and is not transmitted to LG servers.
The statement added that LG TVs do not “collect, record or transmit ambient conversations in your home, unless voice functionality has been intentionally activated by the user.”
The statement added that audio processing happens “only when voice functionality has been activated by the user and a wake [word] (such as ‘Hi LG’) is detected.”
The video underscores the myriad privacy concerns surrounding smart TVs. Many users are unaware of the various ways that smart TVs can track the activity of people in the home, and many presume (and reasonably so) that the TV isn’t tracking anything if it’s not connected to the Internet.
Per Gamers Nexus’ report, it’s possible that LG TVs can track user activity when they’re used as dumb displays and subsequently share that data with LG should the device be connected to the Internet.
The video also highlights the complexities of understanding user agreements and the concerning level of interest that smart TV manufacturers and operating system (OS) owners have in building products that can monitor users’ activity, even clandestinely. Smart TV OS operators lament struggling to reconcile the wants of advertisers with customers’ right to privacy.
While this is a concern for all smart TV brands, LG TVs’ reported behavior is of particular interest because the company is known for making some of the most expensive, high-end TVs. It has garnered a reputation for fewer ads and less user tracking than budget brands, but that reputation is under new scrutiny.
That includes last month’s revelation that LG monitors were installing McAfee ads onto connected Windows PCs.
With all this in mind, you may want to check out Ars’ guide for avoiding smart TV ads and tracking.
And you can watch Gamers Nexus’ video, which also includes discussion of remote code execution vulnerabilities currently going through the disclosure process, below:
This article was updated with comments from LG.