Attacking the Internet Using Broadcast Digital Television

Abstract

In the attempt to bring modern broadband Internet features to traditional broadcast television, the Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) consortium introduced a specification called Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband Television (HbbTV), which allows broadcast streams to include embedded HTML content that is rendered by the television. This system is already in very wide deployment in Europe and has recently been adopted as part of the American digital television standard. Our analyses of the specifications, and of real systems implementing them, show that the broadband and broadcast systems are combined insecurely. This enables a large-scale exploitation technique with a localized geographical footprint based on Radio Frequency (RF) injection, which requires a minimal budget and infrastructure and is remarkably difficult to detect. In this article, we present the attack methodology and a number of follow-on exploitation techniques that provide significant flexibility to attackers. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the technical complexity and required budget are low, making this attack practical and realistic, especially in areas with high population density: In a dense urban area, an attacker with a budget of about $450 can target more than 20,000 devices in a single attack. A unique aspect of this attack is that, in contrast to most Internet of Things/Cyber-Physical System threat scenarios, where the attack comes from the data network side and affects the physical world, our attack uses the physical broadcast network to attack the data network.

Towards an Analysis of Security Issues, Challenges, and Open Problems in the Internet of Things

“…There are several cases where researchers showed the successful takeover of smart things [5], [6], [7]. The common attack strategy is to compromise one device in the IoT network and perform fraudulent acts towards another connected object, impersonating the real one.…”

“…Magnetic sensors use in the streets (to collect and disseminate data) are compromised using professional transmitters or antennas from a couple of miles away, as there are few security protocols in place [6] . Oren et al [7] have found in their research that a smart TV could be compromised using a cheap antenna and through broadcasting messages, as it relies on an insecure Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband Television Standard (HbbTV).…”

Smart-TV security: risk analysis and experiments on Smart-TV communication channels

“…More recent works point out new original attack paths which must also be considered. In [19] authors discuss the possibility to attack a smart-TV using data included in modern DVB-T TV broadcasts. This work has been technically validated in [2].…”

FAIoT: Towards Building a Forensics Aware Eco System for the Internet of Things

“…Oren et al showed that a smart TV could be compromised using a cheap antenna and through broadcasting messages, as it relies on an insecure Hybrid BroadcastBroadband Television Standard (HbbTV) [25]. Researchers from IOActive Labs [26] presented a mechanism that can be used to attack traffic control systems.…”