Miracast dongles - How secure?

[PiggyMiddle]

Hi all,

Given the LG "call home" revelations, the paranoid amongst us, me specifically, was wondering how secure some of the cheap Miracast dongles may be.

I have a 25-buck iPazzPort dongle that works perfectly, well most of the times. It sometimes fails to connect to Miracast, but trying again usually solves that. So far at the worst, the second time has been the charm.

But, there is no way to reset the device so it has my MAC address etc in some kind of permanent memory. It displays it onscreen when I plug it into an HDMI port of ANY TV and it is searching for Miracast devices. Then, when it finds a new device it stores that one too. Not sure how many it can store, but so far two, is TWO TOO many.

Same for in DLNA mode, which only works 30% of the time, but it stores multiple wifi access details including WPA-2-PSK.

This then got my brain pondering if it may be calling home. A MAC address and wifi WPA are a pretty powerful things to be passing around to the Internet et al if it is calling home.

Thoughts, well, other than to my level of paranoia. LOL

 

[Rukbat]

If I had your WPA2 password I could get into your network - but you'd probably notice my car parked outside your house. Wifi doesn't go that far. Giving me the password if all I had was your external IP address, unless you use the same password for the router and wifi, would be useless.

The MAC address of your TV? I suppose I could do something to force a picture to its screen if I were close enough to your house to access your wifi with that password I also had. There's not much use for the MAC address of one of your devices.

It's normal to think the guy following you through all the twists and turns of the city, at 3 AM when no one else is about, might be after you. But if you think the clothing dummy in the store window is after you, you're paranoid.

 

[PiggyMiddle]

Ummm, thanks for the reply -- but I suspect you are not well versed in how Miracast devices work. The NIC is the address of my ADSL-MODEM / Router that is connected to the dongle via wifi. It is a dumb TV otherwise I would not need the dongle.

As to distance wifi you would be surprised. I live out in the boonies and my nearest neighbor is more than half a mile away and I get a +12db signal from their wifi. They are not using any extenders or powered antennas, just a laptop and the 2.4GHz wifi. I can connect using their guest-password and surf the web but it is not a good enough connection to run videos, but I can certainly poke around in their network.