Smart TVs bring along benefits that actual televisions can’t offer. Internet access and communication with other devices make possible choose your broadcast program, share your favorite shows, watch YouTube videos and use other apps that we already have on our phones.

As Google couldn’t be less, has already launched Android TV, their small-screen Android operation system. We hope that the giant and the other technological companies are aware that connected TVs not only come loaded with virtues, but also with risks in security issues.

At least for now it doesn’t offer such a wide range of possibilities as smartphones, and it is neither a personal computer, but everything points that in a couple of years they will offer similar benefits. Take for example banking operations, like managing our accounts through the banks virtual platforms or online shopping. A delicious treat for cybercriminals.

A recent research of the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) identifies the cyberattacks as the main threats for Smart Homes, this threat will increase as more and more devices are connected within them and the network.

Apart from banking information, there is much more data at the mercy of the assailants. We just have to take a look into the new controversy that splattered Samsung, accused of listening to their customers conversations through their Smart TV’s microphones.

This is because the service conditions advise that in order to enable Voice Recognition, some voice commands must be captured and analyzed through remote control. The privacy policy states: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.”

Samsung is not the first company accused of recording their viewers. In 2013, a British developer discovered that LG’s Smart TV was gathering information about the user’s television habits via its smart ad feature. Later that year, Malik Mesellem expert in cyber security found a weakness in Samsung TVs that would make them liable to denial-of-service attacks (the famous DDos).

Despite the South Korean company has strongly denied the listening’s accusation, and “third parties” would only be the company responsible of converting the voice commands into orders, suspicions have not disappeared. If they can spy with your phone microphone, why wouldn’t they do it through this one?

Nor should we forget that TVs also incorporate cameras, so making video calls is just around the corner. As we are connected to the Net, digital offenders may have access to images of your living room. Creating a new window for cyberespionage, directly into your home.

These devices also store large amounts of personal data, all kinds of documents stored both in the device’s internal memory and in the cloud. A malware installed in the TV could extract information and miss use it.

Experts admit that we must not fall into alarmism and completely reject smart appliances, but is important that we know the risks and be careful.

So if you have an Android operating system TV, the best thing you can do is protect it with Panda Mobile Security, our antivirus for Android. You will not regret it!

The post Smart TVs have become the new target for cyber criminals appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.

Sometimes, Google Chrome tells us to distrust a website and warns us that that site can be dangerous. But instead of listening to it, we ignore it. We are so obsessed on quickly reaching the neck click, that we don’t even read the message.

A study published by Google’s Chrome team stated that only one in four users pays attention to the SSL security certificate warnings and takes their advice. That’s why they decided to redesign them, reducing and simplifying the text, and adding more graphic information. Hoping, this will make users read the information before taking risks.

But what does SSL stands for? This acronym refers to “Security Sockets Layer”, a secure connection protocol that enables you to browse the Internet with maximum guarantees. When a browser visits a webpage, it checks the site’s identity and its SSL. It informs you when something goes wrong, the site’s certificate is not from a trusted organization, it has expired, or the connection between the browser and the website is not secure. What’s the objective? The main objective is to prevent the users, letting them know that the site could threaten their safety. For example, if you were making a purchase, someone could steal your credit card information.

Many users may not take into account their browser’s opinion. If their browser simply tells them that the SSL is out of date, likely they won’t understand what this means or the risk this entails. Nevertheless, if they, like Chrome already does, point out that an attacker could steal your information, you would be more vigilant.

“Even though we prefer that the user decides things, in some cases, it simply doesn’t make sense. It’s simply impossible to explain something as complex as cryptography to many users,” says Andreas Gal, chief technology officer at Mozilla. Gal refers in this way to the difficulty of transferring and translating information about privacy to those users who should worry about it.

Lujo Bauer, Associate Research Professor CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University, published a paper in which recommended that web browsers present the information in a comprehensible and concise way, and offer the top options to users. This is why Chrome decided to reduce the text and make the warning signal more visible, even highlighting in blue the “Go Back” option and diminishing the “Advanced Options” that allows access to the not safe site.

Would these measures be useful? Or, are we so lazy that we will continue to ignore the information about our own security? The underlying problem is still there: we stop paying attention after viewing new sites several times. According to a research by Brigham Young University, in which after analyzing a variety of 40 different warnings – like anti-virus, software updates, or SSL– the results showed that after seeing them more than once, we stop noticing them.

Communicating security problems is complicated if we don’t read the warnings, and the only thing we want is to keep on browsing without being disturbed. “The immediate cost of heeding the warning is high, because I will not be able to achieve my immediate goal, which is to reach the site and complete the bill payment or the status update that I had in mind,” says Raluca Budiu, senior researcher at usability consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group.

Can they steal our information if we dismiss the warnings? The answer is yes.

Do we have a lack of education about Internet? What else can browsers do to draw our attention in order to stop us from entering untrusted sites? Should they block the accss? Or, it is better that they keep letting us choose? You can reflect on it, or look up your browsers security options, so next time it warns you not to enter a site, you’ll pay more attention.

The post Browsers security: Why do we ignore their warnings? appeared first on MediaCenter Panda Security.