How safe are you around your smart TV? : Tomas Foltyn

How safe are you around your smart TV?

By Tomas Foltyn

THE times when all that our TV sets could do was show us ‘regular’ TV stations are now over. These days, such ‘old-school’ TVs are increasingly being replaced with their ‘smart’ successors, which we can use for streaming video and audio, playing games, browsing the Internet, and downloading and using apps — all of that thanks to their Internet connectivity.

This evolution is part of a wider trend that involves connecting consumer electronics and everyday objects to the Internet, creating a rapidly growing mass of various Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices in the process.

However, the Internet connectivity of smart TVs and the perilous state of security in the IoT space in general open the floodgates to a deluge of threats to our privacy and security.

Research has shown that various attacks against smart TVs are possible and practicable, often requiring no physical access to the device or interaction from the user. It has also been demonstrated several times that, once compromised, an Internet-enabled TV can serve as a springboard for attacks at other devices within the same network, ultimately targeting a user’s personal information stored on even juicier targets such as PCs or laptops.

Watch you(r) back

Now, you probably enjoy watching your smart TV, but chances are that you don’t want it to watch you, too. But ‘watch its watchers’ is precisely what these TVs can do.

Back in 2013, researchers demonstrated that, by exploiting security holes in some models of Samsung’s Internet-capable TVs, it was possible to remotely turn on the built-in camera and microphone. In addition to converting the TVs into all-seeing, all-hearing devices, they were able to take control of embedded social media apps, posting information on the users’ behalf and accessing files. Another researcher showed off an attack that allowed him to insert fake news stories into the browser of a smart TV.

Malware, too, can find its way into smart TVs and convert them into bugging devices. In this attack vector, which has also been proven practicable, hackers could create a legitimate app before releasing a malicious update that would then be automatically downloaded onto a smart TV fitted with a built-in microphone.

In 2014, a loophole in a widely used interactive TV standard known as HbbTV came to light. It emerged that attack code could be buried into ‘rogue’ broadcasts and target thousands of smart TVs in one fell swoop, hijacking these as well as other devices in the network, stealing logins, displaying bogus adverts, and even sniffing for unprotected Wi-Fi networks. In addition, the attack was found not to require any special hacking smarts.

Issues with HbbTV were in the spotlight again in 2017. A security researcher demonstrated a technique for deploying a rogue over-the-air signal to compromise Internet-enabled televisions. Once taken over by the attacker, the TV could be used for an apparently endless list of malicious actions, including to spy on the user via the TV's microphone and camera and to burrow deep into the local network. As many as 9 in 10 smart TVs sold in recent years were estimated to be prone to this hack. As with the earlier example, the victim would spot no outward signs of something being amiss.

In February 2018, US non-profit organization Consumer Reports released the results of hack tests on Internet-connected TVs of five brands, each of which features a different smart TV platform.

“Millions of smart TVs can be controlled by hackers exploiting easy-to-find security flaws,” said the organization. The devices were found to be susceptible to rather unsophisticated hacks that would enable an attacker to flip through channels, crank up the volume to blaring levels, install new apps, and knock the device off Wi-Fi — all of that remotely, of course.

The review also found that users need to consent to the collection of very detailed data about their viewing habits — unless they’re ready to forgo the smart features of their new smart TV. Over the years, several manufacturers have been found to engage in the behind-the-scenes acquisition of, and trafficking in, data about the viewing habits of consumers.

Having a listen

Concerns about the implications of smart TVs for privacy were also raised in 2015, when Samsung’s ‘voice recognition’ function as another layer of convenience that enables you to give voice commands to your smart TV came to the fore.

The company warned its customers who use the voice activation feature on their smart TVs that their private conversations would be among the data captured and shared with third parties. In addition, the voice information picked up in such ‘official snooping’ was not always encrypted, potentially enabling intruders to listen in on private conversations.

All told, the security conversation is here to stay, as a range of private and security concerns persist while more and more consumers are snapping up smart TVs. According to one projection, over 750 million smart TVs will be in use worldwide by the end of 2018.

Smart TVs afford us the opportunity to use them for purposes that are more commonly associated with computers. In fact, that’s what these TVs have become — Internet-connected ‘computers’, much like mobile phones. It would no doubt help if we thought of them as such and treated them accordingly. — SG

— The writer is a security writer at ESET

Courtesy: Saudi Gazette

Were Vikings Muslims?

Swedish researchers find ‘Allah’ sewn into burial clothes

 A RESEARCH team in Sweden discovered that Vikings had the world “Allah” embroidered into their funeral clothes.

The findings raising questions about the ties between the Islamic World and the Viking-era Scandinavians, which could suggest that some Vikings were Muslim.

Arabic letters spelling the words “Allah” and “Ali” in silk were found on the burial costumes from Viking boat graves that had been kept in storage for over a century.

Textile archaeologist Annika Larsson of Uppsala University who revisited garments that were dug up in Birka and Gamla Uppsala in Sweden in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries made the discovery.

It is well-known among researchers that the Vikings, those Scandinavian warriors who roamed the seas between the 9th and 11th centuries, made contact with the Islamic World. But new evidence suggests these interactions were greater than previously thought.

Previous DNA testing has shown that some people buried in Viking graves originated in Persia, where Islam was dominant.

Larsson has determined that the material on the garments she is studying comes from Central Asia, Persia, and China, and her team is now working with DNA researchers to determine who, exactly, was wearing them. Still, Larsson says “it is more likely these findings show that Viking age burial customs were influenced by Islamic ideas such as eternal life in paradise after death.”

In the past decade, researchers have also unearthed Arab coins buried by Vikings and a ring inscribed with “for Allah” in a Viking grave. Yet Larsson’s burial garments mark the first time that artifacts with the Arabic characters for “Ali” have been found in Scandinavia.

Again, it’s not clear what the significance of this is. Larsson notes that “Ali” and “Allah” always appear together in the burial garments.

“That we so often maintain that Eastern objects in Viking Age graves could only be the result of plundering and eastward trade doesn’t hold up as an explanatory model, because the inscriptions appear in typical Viking Age clothing,” Larsson told The Independent. “It is a staggering thought” that these burial garments could’ve been “made west of the Muslim heartland.”

In an interview with the the Swedish news site The Local, Larsson added that her findings demonstrate the importance of “challenging historical research.” The scholars who originally studied these garments in the mid-20th century failed to notice their non-Western influences, and it was only through Larsson’s review of them that she was able to uncover their meaning.

Correcting the record is important not just for its own sake, but also because it can prevent people from weaponizing false narratives for their own gain. Larsson points out that her research could help disassociate the Vikings from the many white supremacist groups who have adopted their iconography. Unlike these hate groups, it doesn’t appear that the Vikings opposed Islam; in fact, they may have embraced parts of the religion as their own. 

Courtesy: http://saudigazette.com.sa/article/519333/World/Europe/Were-Vikings-Muslims

— Al Arabiya English

 

How Islam Created the Modern World : Mark Graham

How Islam Created the Modern World

By: Mark Graham

In a clear and concise language, Mark Graham endeavours to show in his book How Islam Created the Modern World the decisive influence of the civilisation of Islam in setting the stage for the modern world.

Review of How Islam Created the Modern World by Mark Graham. Beltsville, Maryland: Amana Publications, 2006. Hardcover, 208 pages. ISBN-10: 1590080432 - ISBN-13: 978-1590080436.

For several centuries, corresponding to the European Middle Ages, Baghdad was the intellectual center of the world. It was there that a huge community of translators and scholars appropriated in Arabic culture the knowledge of ancient civilisations and combined it with the cultural traditions and imperatives of the Islamic context to create a scientific, mathematical and philosophical golden age.

This golden age of Islam embraced all the products of human spirit practiced at that time, including different scientific disciplines, medicine, symbolic and artistic creation, social organisation and material culture, including productive branches12 of applied knowledge in industry, architecture and the making of instruments.

These accomplishments were so numerous and original that they realised an unprecedented stage of civilisation and occupied a high rank in human creation. Being unique and at the front of inventivity, they gained the admiration of other peoples who were aware of the existence of these treasures. Hence a dynamic process of transmission was set up between the Muslim and the Latin worlds all over the Mediterranean coasts.

This transfer process was progressive and uninterrupted for several centuries, mainly in the Andalus, but also in Sicily, Southern France and in the Middle East during the Crusades.

At the dawn of the Renaissance, Christian Europe was wearing Persian clothes, singing Arab songs, reading Spanish Muslim philosophy and eating off Mamluk Turkish brassware. This is the story of how Muslims taught Europe to live well and think clearly. It is the story of how Islam created the Modern World.

It is this story of civilisation that Mark Graham describes in his book. Who would have thought an Edgar-winning mystery novelist could explain to us in clear, concise language that without Islam, western civilization as we know it might not exist? Underlying that dramatic proposition is an important thesis: The ongoing debate about a supposed "clash of civilizations" misses the reality that Islam and the West developed from essentially the same roots and, despite their rivalry, helped each other in profound ways along the path to "civilisation". In fact, the West and Islam can be viewed as merely different faces of the same civilization. He explains how Arabic-speaking Muslims not only preserved the scientific and philosophical knowledge of the Greeks but also "made it their own", greatly extending and improving on it. For example, the newly developed concepts of Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes) found their way into western universities, where they were viewed as challenges to church orthodoxy and ushered in the beginnings of the scientific method.

Muslim thinkers, poets and scientists set the stage for the European Renaissance: Graham points out specific borrowings in Dante's Divine Comedy from the works of the great Andalusian writer Ibn ‘Arabi, and shows how these intercultural transfers were likely mediated by Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini, who had brought back learning from the libraries of Toledo, where, even after the Christian reconquista Muslims and Christians continued to live together and to work along the same paths as when the Muslims were the rulers of the Iberian peninsula.

In other places of his book, Graham shows more concrete ways in which the West is indebted to Islam: A Mongol invasion of Europe was thwarted when Egypt's Mamluk army defeated the Mongols at ‘Ain Jalut, Palestine, in 1260. Imagine how different the West would be today if the Mongols had triumphed! As it turned out, the West never again faced the threat of Mongol invasion after ‘Ain Jalut, and the breather which thus provided Europe a chance to absorb what Graham terms "the other great gift of Islam—knowledge".

Mark Graham is a mystery novelist whose works were translated in several languages. He is the winner of the Edgar award. He studied medieval history and religious studies at Connecticut College and has a Master's degree in English literature from Kutztown University. He lives in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

Contents of the book

Acknowledgements 9

Foreword 11

Introduction 15

Chapter 1: Islam becomes an empire 17

Chapter 2: The House of wisdom 37

Chapter 3: Hippocrates wears a turban 51

Chapter 4: The great work 63

Chapter 5: Beyond the Arabian nights 77

Chapter 6: Islam's secret weapon 97

Chapter 7: A medieval war on terror 117

Chapter 8: The first World war 139

Chapter 9: Raiders of the last library 157

Chapter 10: Children of Abraham, children of Aristotle 175

Appendix 1: What the Qur'an says 183

Appendix 2: Arabic words in English 185

Further reading 189

Index 197

Further reading

"Centuries in the House of Wisdom", The Guardian, Thursday September 23, 2004. Online here.

"Ibn Tufayl, Abu Bakr Muhammad (before 1110-85)", online here.

Islam and Islamic History in Arabia and The Middle East: The Legacy. Online here.

MacDonald, Duncan B. Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory [1903]. Online on The Internet Sacred Text Archive here.

Morgan, Michael Hamilton, Lost History: the Enduring Legacy of Muslim Scientists, Thinkers and Artists.Washington DC: The National Geographic Books 2007. Lost History Home: here.

Leaman, Oliver1998. "Islamic philosophy", in E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved August 23, 2007, from here.

Courtesy: http://www.muslimheritage.com/article/how-islam-created-modern-world

نبی کریم ص کی حیات مبارکہ کا ہر ایک پہلو ہمارے لئے مشعل راہ ہے۔