Among the various online services that the devices was sending requests to, was one (encrypted) totvinteractive.tv.
In the field of cryptography this bang out of secret key is referred to as salt.
Unable to brute-force it, the researchers wanted to see if they can get the salt from the gadget.
This allowed them to use a checksum that will make the sent data be accepted by the TV.
After Avast researchers discovered these holes they notified Vizio which promptly issued patches for the flaws.
source: www.techworm.net
