Carlotta Tagliaro (TU Wien)
Smart TVs enable the integration of the traditional broadcast signal with services offered by the Internet. Specifically, the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) protocol allows broadcasters to offer consumers additional features via the Internet (e.g., quizzes and the ability to restart programs), enriching their viewing experience. HbbTV works using standard web technologies as transparent overlays over a TV channel. Despite the increasing adoption of HbbTV worldwide, studies on its privacy are scarce.
In this study, we show how we tested a range of 36 channels across five European countries and what challenges we faced; specifically, every country adopts different ways of delivering the broadcast signal to the TVs. Thus, we identified a common experimental setup and instructions adopted in each country to assess the channels' privacy level. We also show how the extracted URLs pointing to the HbbTV application can foster further replicability and studies. Finally, we delve into how we measured users' awareness of HbbTV security and privacy risks and how we avoided bias in our results.
Speaker's Biography
Carlotta Tagliaro is a second year PhD student at TU Wien (Vienna, Austria). She has a great interest in Internet of Things security, especially in what concerns application-layer messaging protocols adopted by everyday users. She obtained her double master's degree in cyber security from the University of Trento (Italy) and the University of Twente (the Netherlands). She has worked as a junior researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler - FBK in Trento, Italy on the security of the MQTT protocol.