Critical Vulnerabilities Discovered in World’s Largest Android TVs Manufacturer

Television plays a vital role in our day to day life; that’s why sticking with television has become one of the entertainment consumers’ habits. Everyone is connected with the television for their own entertainment purpose.

If we come across the list of TV manufacturer than TCL is one of the renowned and well-known manufacturers who has graced as the 3rd largest TV manufacturer in this industry.

But being at the top is also a negative sign, as you become the most usual target of every rival and the threat actors. Recently, cybersecurity researchers have reported that some serious vulnerabilities are found in TCL Android TVs.

First Blood

The cybersecurity researchers affirmed they had found some absurd security conflicts in the TV Sticks during the investigation. Every stick that has been tested by the cybersecurity researchers came out with at least one of the mentioned following security flaws:-

  • Port 22 open and enabling SSH access as root: root out of the box
  • Port 5555 open and enabling unauthenticated android (adb) as root: root out of the box
  • There are some rooted devices with world-executable su binaries in multiple locations.
  • There is an open WiFi network with adb and ssh daemons running.
  • Apart from this, port 7989 was showing a 404 error while visiting 10.0.0.117:7989 in the browser.

IANA list for other ports that end with 989

The researchers have listed all other ports that are ended with 989, and here they are mentioned below:-

ftps-data989tcpftp protocol, data, over TLS/SSL
tr-rsrb-p31989tcpcisco
mshnet1989tcpMHSnet
zarkov2989tcpZARKOV
bv-queryengine3989tcpBindView-Query
parallel   4989tcpParallel
wbem-https5989tcpWBEM
Sunwebadmins8989tcpSun
9989-9989Unassigned
10934-10989Unassigned

Contact Tracing – CVE-2020-27403

According to the report, the experts initially drafted the first CVE request and then transferred it to the MITRE. After receiving it, they have sent a copy of the draft advisory to TCL’s [email protected] email address, inquiring that they verify a receipt of the report.

However, MITRE has not replied to the report; that’s why the experts double-checked that the device was not narrated by any other Certificate Numbering Authority (CNA). After checking it, twice the experts detect that TLCs Corporation owns Alcatel. 

Not only this, but they also owned the Blackberry Moblie; the MITRE has not replied to the report. But, tracing the contact has become tougher as the company was not responding to any reports.

Backdoor Update Vulnerability – CVE-2020-28055

After 13 working days, the company relied on the report and took more than two weeks to confirm a security report’s receipt. But the company replied in their first email that they had fixed the vulnerability. 

The experts are now questioning why they take two weeks to reply back and fix the vulnerability so easily. So, the experts decided to dig into the matter carefully and investigate some more vulnerabilities of this kind.

The experts started digging through .rc files looking for vendor-specific changes, and they found some critical changes made by TCL to various folders on the TV file system that should be completely bolted down.

The cybersecurity researchers affirmed that this seems to be a very reckless performance of behavior from TCL. The company should have reported the vulnerability to the security experts, and the company also should describe the whole vulnerability fixing process.

You can follow us on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook for daily Cyber security and hacking news updates.

BALAJI is an Ex-Security Researcher (Threat Research Labs) at Comodo Cybersecurity. Editor-in-Chief & Co-Founder - Cyber Security News & GBHackers On Security.