Don’t blink.<\/b>
On Tuesday, WikiLeaks released thousands of documents that purportedly show how the CIA is able to spy on our phones, computers and other gadgets. CNET is unable to verify if the documents are real or have been altered, so we’re not jumping to conclusions. (Samsung didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.)
But clearly, the idea that your Samsung TV might be spying on you is one of the more startling claims. And yet it may not be that simple. If we’re reading the WikiLeaks documents correctly, there’s no proof that the CIA ever finished refining this tool.
Here’s what we do and don’t know about the so-called \u00ab\u00a0Weeping Angel\u00a0\u00bb hack.
Assuming the WikiLeaks documents are entirely legit, here’s what we know:
In June 2014, the CIA and UK’s MI5 held a joint workshop to improve the \u00ab\u00a0Weeping Angel\u00a0\u00bb hack, which appears to have specifically targeted Samsung’s F8000 series TVs released in 2013.
A \u00ab\u00a0Fake-Off\u00a0\u00bb mode was developed to trick users into thinking their TV was off (by turning off the screen and front LEDs), while still recording voice conversations. Based on what we know about the TV, the hack would have tapped into the microphone located in a TV’s accompanying remote.
The good news is that as of June 2014, the TVs couldn’t be hacked remotely, over the internet. The group was installing the hack by physically plugging a USB cable (or thumb drive, we’re not sure which) into the TV. In addition:
In 2015, Samsung caught flak when it was revealed that some of their Smart TVs listened to your conversations. Back then, we described a way to turn that feature off.
Literally anything that might have happened with Weeping Angel after 2014. We don’t know…
Assuming the documents are legit, we only have a nearly three-year-old snapshot of what two spy agencies were doing to a single range of TVs, back in the day.
It’s not a lot to go on, but we’ll let you know if we get more info.<\/p>\n