Sony TV’s can be remotely exploited without any authentication by attackers due to three vulnerabilities spotted by Fortinet researchers, with one of the vulnerabilities being rated “Critical Severity” while the other two were rated “High Severity”.
The critical vulnerability was a command injection attack which handles file names incorrectly when the user uploads a media file, Fortinet researcher Tony Loi said in an Oct. 4 blog post. This flaw could allow an attacker to run arbitrary commands on a system which can result in complete remote code execution root privilege.
The two High Severity flaws were a stack buffer overflow bug and a directory traversal bug. The Stack buffer overflow flaw is a memory corruption flaw which results from insufficient size checking of user input and the directory traversal bug is the result of the application handling file names incorrectly when the user uploads a media file.
As a result, an attacker can exploit the mishandling of file names to run arbitrary commands on the system, resulting in remote code execution with root privilege.
“These vulnerabilities reside specifically in one of Sony’s proprietary applications called Photo Sharing Plus,” Loi said. “Since they can be exploited remotely without authentication by attackers who are connected to the same local Network, customers should upgrade their TVs as soon as possible.”
Last month Sony released an advisory for multiple vulnerabilities in its Bravia Smart TV devices as a result of the findings.
While exploitation from cybercriminals is a serious threat, researchers also warn users to doublecheck the privacy settings of their devices concerning data collection by manufactures as it is becoming more common for manufacturers to regularly update user agreements or even collect data without consumer knowledge or consent.
