Watching a network from a cable box?

[Cz]

I was watching an old DefCon talk titled "No-Tech Hacking" and this guy was talking about taking the coax cable out of the back of his TV in his hotel and jacking it into a cable box and then outputting that back into his TV and then he starts switching through other people's sets on the network. People playing videos games, watching porn, even the hotel admin's PC...

Can someone Please elaborate on this for me and explain in more detail how this works? I mean I understand there's a whole network going through that cable but to just shove that cord into the cable box and go switching through other people's feeds sounds way too easy.

I don't know how you guys feel about hotlinks, so ill just leave it safe down there if you want to watch it.

Code: [Select]

https://youtu.be/5CWrzVJYLWw?t=40m36s

[HTH]

Yes and no, because frequency multiplexing is a beautiful thin you Can in fact just plug in a cable box and check out all of the downstream channels ezpz. And in many layouts its possible to see whats on the screen of another tv for various reasons (including some less than standard uses of upstream frequencies)

The only odd part is why the admins allegedly had a pc not only connected to the cable network but broadcasting in some way (cable internet even if that was a valid answer shouldn't transmit display data), that part is less likely but NOT impossible, just requires certain variables to be setup just so. (like poorly set up security cameras perhaps..)

[Cz]

(cable internet even if that was a valid answer shouldn't transmit display data),

But that was my main problem with this whole thing. I mean, I'm not an idiot, but I'm not too deep into anything. So for instance, to my knowledge, the only way he would be able see that is like to SSH into it or something of that nature. Also i noticed he said "if you have one of these you can do some Really fun things" right before he showed the admin P.C., and t was a keyboard, so, i dont know, he mightve had something more than a cable box plugged into it for that.

Or... I dont know. I dont have the knowledge of how this information is being handled from the other person's side. Because lets say for example, he saw a Nintendo game loading, right? So someone has a game plugged into a television (Probably just regular A/V) and then that image data gets put through the tv, and... into the network? back through a coax cable that has nothing to do with it's path? or is he kind of "pinging" the cable and asking it for an image?

[KingCasra]

Yes and no, because frequency multiplexing is a beautiful thin you Can in fact just plug in a cable box and check out all of the downstream channels ezpz. And in many layouts its possible to see whats on the screen of another tv for various reasons (including some less than standard uses of upstream frequencies)

The only odd part is why the admins allegedly had a pc not only connected to the cable network but broadcasting in some way (cable internet even if that was a valid answer shouldn't transmit display data), that part is less likely but NOT impossible, just requires certain variables to be setup just so. (like poorly set up security cameras perhaps..)

I'd imagine that they are using it to distribute the programming