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72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

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Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#31

Post by jon-wood »

rightbyte wrote: post #15
jon-wood wrote: post #10

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

What DNS do you hardcode? Google's? Or do you advice the use to set it up himself? I am very suspicious of the push for https and the like. I feel it is mainly about hiding the payload from me not any third party.

Currently we’re using both Google and Cloudflare’s DNS, providing resiliency against one or the other being unavailable, but I’m looking at potentially using our own resolvers just to reduce the amount of data being exposed to third parties.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#33

Post by jon-wood »

MayeulC wrote: post #25
jon-wood wrote: post #10

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

How do you deal with NAT64? It's a real thing with some consumer ISPs. I can see myself using it as well, maybe even just to see which devices don't use DNS. Here's another idea: generate a unique IPv6 address per DNS request, route them to the correct destination, filter other IPs. Not really scalable, but usable on small networks/VLANs.

Currently, we don’t. The devices don’t support IPv6, so it’s not a problem we’ve had to deal with so far.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#34

Post by _abox »

t0astbread wrote: post #24
EvanAnderson wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right to be suspicious. The DNS-over-HTTPS model favors those who run the servers (because they get exclusive access to monetizable end user name resolution data) and those who control the resolvers. You might control the resolver on your personal computer (for now). You probably don't control it on your phone. You most likely won't control it on your embedded devices.

The root evil here is that you can't change the root certificates in such devices. Even if you controlled its DNS, the device could still just be programmed to fail if it doesn't reach its analytics/ad/whatever server.

The Amazon Fire TV does this already :(

If it doesn't see internet it just blocks itself and goes to a screen "Oops I have no internet".

So you can forget about watching movies from your local server using the VLC app as well. Ridiculous.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#35

Post by jlgaddis »

jon-wood wrote: post #10

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

> ... and the response to that is hardcoding a set of known good DNS servers which we can rely on.

Netgear, at one point, also decided that hard-coding an IP address (for NTP, not DNS) was the best solution [0].

--

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTP_server_misuse_and_abuse#Ne...

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#36

Post by GekkePrutser »

fingerlocks wrote: post #20
ugexe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if every single piece of hardware or software followed this one crazy trick the world would be better because some people at a tech company wouldn’t have to field as many support questions?

Yes, support is supremely expensive. This is especially true in the hardware IoT space under discussion. Some large fraction of any semi-successful hardware company will exist to field a constant onslaught of support emails, handling returns, warranties, and social media. It’s a big money sink. Margins are already razor thin in hardware, so yeah anything that can be done to reduce your support costs is welcomed.

I worked in support a long time and yes it's expensive. A few support cases will destroy your margin on a product sold.

However, these IoT companies add these features mainly to benefit from selling the acquired data. The users are not asking for this. They're making it difficult for themselves.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#37

Post by tga »

mojo982 wrote: post #30
CraneWorm wrote: post #22

Just don't buy smart TV, or any of that IoT crap. It is possible to buy 58 inch dumb TV, connect that to a machine you own.

Is it? I’m still holding onto my TV from 2014 because it doesn’t have “smart” functionality. Every time I look at new ones I can’t find good dumb ones.

Aren’t all smart TVs dumb if you don’t connect them to the internet?

I wouldn’t be surprised if manufacturers start selling TVs that need to be activated online before first use, but I don’t know of any that do that already.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#38

Post by dspillett »

mojo982 wrote: post #30
CraneWorm wrote: post #22

Just don't buy smart TV, or any of that IoT crap. It is possible to buy 58 inch dumb TV, connect that to a machine you own.

Is it? I’m still holding onto my TV from 2014 because it doesn’t have “smart” functionality. Every time I look at new ones I can’t find good dumb ones.

Depends where you are looking. They are not often carried by big name stores because of a mix of lack of demand and manufacturer kick-backs for selling the smart ones. Any they are relatively expensive, for the same reasons.

Another option is to buy a monitor not a TV, but again because of market scale you'll pay a lot more for a monitor that large. They don't sell enough to consumers for volume savings to kick in, and they are aimed at commercial use so there is at least a little more "make it good rather than cheap" incentive than there is in other markets.

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#39

Post by black3r »

jon-wood wrote: post #10

I’m responsible for a bunch of IoT hardware, and every firmware spec I write includes a note on not using the DNS servers provided via DHCP. While sure there are companies explicitly doing this to avoid filtering, at least in my case it’s because a significant proportion of DHCP servers are configured to send DNS to your ISP, and ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN r…

and then there are providers/networks who straight up drop outgoing DNS queries, like the university I went to (including dormitory network).

Re: 72% of smart TVs and 46% of game consoles hardcode DNS settings

#40

Post by GekkePrutser »

stiray wrote: post #17

[flagged]

Voting with your wallet doesn't help if everyone does the same thing. Not everyone is willing/able to live without technology.

It's also very hard to figure out what exactly they do before making the purchase, and many vendors change their stance with devices already in the field. Look at TP-Link for example: They suddenly stopped allowing local access to their Kasa switches 2 weeks ago. No more integration with Home Assistant. Yes, they have decided to revert it already. That doesn't mean they can't do it again. I had bought 7 of these plugs because they offered local access. Now I'm a lot less sure of this brand. But the money is already sunk into it.

https://home-assistant-guide.com/2020/11/17/tp-link-kasa-sma...

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