Dodgy boxes connected to the internet are a major security risk and are being used to facilitate cyberattacks, a new report has warned.
As many as 400,000 Irish homes have a dodgy box, which are used to watch subscription television for free.
However, the report by Grant Thornton has concluded that hackers could use the devices to spy on users and, potentially, expose them to scams that are both tailored and sophisticated.
On Newstalk Breakfast, Grant Thornton cybersecurity partner Howard Shortt urged dodgy box users to be careful.
“The research is showing that there are coordinated attacks [on] overwhelming the kind of services that we commonly use,” he warned.
“If you think about your banking; about different sites and services that you go to, they're being overwhelmed by an attack which is known as a distributed denial of service, right, simply overwhelming it to the point where it can't respond to you.
“That is conducted by what's called a botnet - which is like an army of individual devices that come together in a coordinated attack against a particular service.”
Mr Shortt added that while some cyberattacks might be targeted at large institutions, others might focus on individual dodgy box users.
“We've got a residential proxy in the home, which gives an attacker the ability to do lots of things using your home as the method to get it conducted,” he explained.
“So, things like attacking distributed denial of services, participation in a botnet.
“But you've also got attacks in the home, which would be looking around your home network to see what else is there.
“That's called lateral movement and the ability to hop from one device to another in the home and then to take data out.
“So, if you've got something sensitive or personal or private at home and, if it's stored digitally, that can be taken out of your home.”
A TV remote. Picture by: Allard Schager / Alamy.com. For anyone with a dodgy box, Mr Shortt suggested they regularly check they are not being spied on.
“Make sure these things are as up to date as possible,” he urged.
“Get onto your home router, look at the list of connected devices, make sure you recognise them.
“And if you don't, kick them off your network.”
The Irish Government is understood to be considering a crackdown on dodgy boxes.
Main image: A man is holding a remote control. Picture by: Alamy.com.
