Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has become a popular alternative to normal TV for watching a wide variety of multimedia material. IPTV provides convenience and versatility, from live TV to on-demand streaming. However, beneath its attractive exterior lurks some potential cybersecurity dangers. Let's take a look at the security problems of IPTV together and raise awareness about it.

What Is IPTV? Is IPTV Legal?

Internet Protocol Television, as the name suggests, is the term given to broadcasts and channels made over the internet. You must provide an internet connection to view and watch the contents of these broadcasts.

Here's how IPTV works: a person receives any media and broadcasts it over servers. Whoever wants to stream these posts and channels uses various video player software and URL shortening tools to hide their links. It makes a list of all publications and makes it available to people.

But of course, there are intellectual property rights. Whether or not IPTV is legal has always been a hot topic. In particular, free IPTV listings may not be copyrighted and so are criminal. But other IPTV platforms like YouTube follow all the streaming rules. We'll exclude such official and legal structures from this list.

The legality of IPTV also depends on territories: what's legal in the United States, for instance, might not be legal in Europe.

How Can Hackers Attack You Using IPTV?

Let's say you buy an IPTV link from someone. Does this link you bought cause security problems? The simplest answer to this is hidden in Metasploit.

Metasploit is a framework that includes scanning modules, antivirus circumvention models, and some exploits. Cybersecurity experts and hackers actively use this framework. There are also various attack modules in Metasploit to take advantage of vulnerabilities in many technologies. One of these attack modules (via GitHub) is related to IPTV. Now keep this in mind and let's detail the example a little more about the IPTV link you purchased.

Going back to an example scenario, you may want to use subtitles for a foreign video on platforms where you can watch IPTV. Here, thanks to a module in Metasploit, hackers can run code remotely via subtitles. A platform where you buy an IPTV link may also give you access to some subtitle packages that contain this security vulnerability.

This is just one of the dangers of IPTV. Your IPTV link might be completely secure. But no matter how secure your IPTV link is, you cannot be completely sure of the security of the platform you will watch IPTV on. If the platform on which you play videos has been attacked before, is not up-to-date, or has malicious code injected into it, you may encounter serious security problems here too.

And it's not always about data collection (although your private information is useful to cybercriminals and can be sold on the dark web).

IPTV devices are devices with internet access—in other words, these devices contain software that you can install and update. Let's say you purchased an IPTV subscription from a malicious person, and they told you that in order to watch encrypted channels for free, you need to install particular software. But this software could very well be malicious. As a result, the hacker can remotely run code on your IPTV and turn your device into a bot.

This is how bots on many YouTube watch-boosting sites sold online actually work. Without you knowing, your IPTV device watches other people's YouTube videos. The hacker earns money from you in return.

Can I Trust IPTV?

If you must use IPTV, you should pay attention to legal sanctions. In many countries, the laws regarding intellectual property are clearly defined. Some are legal, but you need to be careful with which streams you're actually viewing because IPTV can be illegal too.

In terms of security, you shouldn't rely on free IPTV platforms. Instead, you can turn to IPTV platforms that are completely legal and secure, which you pay for, and which have large contracts and companies behind them. Legal IPTV services respect copyrights, offer content under license, and take the necessary measures to protect the security and privacy of users. It's entirely up to you to make sure of the platform you will use.