There's a reason that you might want to think twice about buying super cheap electronics:
Miscreants have infected millions of Androids worldwide with malicious firmware before the devices even shipped from their factories, according to Trend Micro researchers at Black Hat Asia.
This hardware is mainly cheapo Android mobile devices, though smartwatches, TVs, and other things are caught up in it.
Anything with a microphone is something that you don't want in your house if it has malware. Supply Chains can be (relatively) secured, but this takes money and effort. A $99 TV simply won't have the revenue stream to support that.
Caveat emptor.
2 comments:
It's not just the cheap stuff. Many manufacturers of higher end products have no qualms about using their devices to harvest data they can sell.
Or you could just isolate such devices from critical applications-financial, home security etc or just not buy them in the first place. I am fully capable of dealing with analog thermostats or door locks.
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