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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

#271

Post by acdha »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #222
acdha wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network filtering means blocking traffic at the network level. Trying to use DNS for this leaves you trusting the client - and there are decades of precedent for clients bypassing that for various reasons, such as this post shows. The solution is to start doing network filtering: if you block packets to unapproved servers, you can actually stop this. You’ll need to run your own proxy, of course, but that’s always bee…

That isn’t really possible, though: CDNs mean that blocking by IP just doesn’t work. The most effective method I’ve found is transparently redirecting all traffic on port 53 to a DNS server I control. DoH means that I might as well setup a transparent HTTPS proxy.

You’ll note that I mentioned a proxy. That’s why: you need to force all traffic through a proxy you control or you’re just hoping that a client doesn’t use hard-coded IPs or an outside API of some source. If your network allows the client to send traffic to port 443 anywhere, any blocking is on the honor system.

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

#272

Post by ufmace »

Ecstatify wrote: post #29
noname120 wrote: post #5

> some of these devices are using a sneaky tactic to bypass your PiHole entirely I don't think that it's malevolent on their part. Lots of ISP DNS are crappy. Hardcoding a reasonably reliable one saves them a lot of frustration and unnecessary technical support.

It is because they don’t give you the option to change it. Set the default to what ever you want, but give me the user who bought the goddamn thing the option to configure it how I see fit. You think TV companies are injecting adverts into peoples TV home screens for their benefit, I don’t see a big sticker on the box when I buy the TV “Ads Integrated Directly into Device”

As a techie and a possible user, I agree that I'd like that feature.

As someone who has/might work for companies building things like that, it sounds like a nightmare. It's a ton of design, testing, translation, validation, etc work to build the UI for adjusting optional settings. And it has to be maintained and tested through all future versions, redesigns, refactorings, etc. It's gonna be a tough sell to do it right considering:

For every 1 techie who legitimately uses it to set it to his custom server and can handle debugging when it goes wrong, 50 people will accidentally set it to something random, or have some distant relative set up some weird hack and then disappear when it breaks, and then call the support line and rage at somebody when it doesn't work and they don't understand why, and rage some more when they can't get the instructions to reset it right.

Whatever feature somebody else is about to propose to fix that is yet another thing that will need design, validation, maintenance, etc forever. It's pretty understandable why product designers would rather build simple dumb UIs with no options that mostly work automatically.

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

#273

Post by dageshi »

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

I imagine if you want a tv like that you can find one. A lot of buyers quite like smart tv's I imagine.

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

#274

Post by tzs »

the8472 wrote: post #61
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 ISP provided DNS is almost universally terrible. They’ll ignore TTLs, rewrite NXDOMAIN responses into the IP address of their ad-laced web search, and occasionally just highjack every single query to send you to a page saying you’re approaching your bandwidth quota Universally? Perhaps in the US? But IoT devices are sold worldwide. While I do run my own recursive resolver I checked my ISP's and they're behaving…

> I'm sure google had only our best interests in mind when unleashing that on us.

Mozilla did more to unleash it than Google. Someone from Mozilla coauthored the RFC for it, and Mozilla had browser support for it first.

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

#275

Post by 1over137 »

scarface74 wrote: post #170
bitlevel wrote: post #89

They appear to not be trustworthy to be on our networks - so we should: 1. Not join them to our networks 2. Stop buying 'Smart TV's' 3. Get panels and a smart box that you can control I'm lucky enough to be able to direct ALL DNS through my router first. Nothing gets out without my say so. Not everyone has that capability, sadly, with home routers. The solution provided by the OP is a solid one - another would be to…

So which “smart box” would that be? Roku? Where the CEO outright said that they aren’t in the hardware business and they are trying to monetize via ads? Google? Need I say more Amazon Fire devices? See above with Google AppleTV? Sure I have a couple. They aren’t trying to monetize with advertising. But the HN crowd is anti-Apple.

Running your own Plex server maybe? (Haven't tried.)

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

#276

Post by kube-system »

sokoloff wrote: post #232
fuzzy2 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is probably part of the vehicle type approval, it would be a modification that needs to be authorized by whatever institution does that in your country. Otherwise it is probably mostly equal to driving without registration. It may not be a felony, but it will be fined.

Given what I see driving around on US roads, there is epsilon-squared chance this would be found let alone fined here. (I’m also not nearly convinced that it’s even illegal in my state and likely not so in any of them, especially given that my car had a dealer service to remove the SIM card as a recall item.)

It definitely wouldn't be illegal to remove a vehicle's cell modem from your own car in the US. The US is very friendly to vehicle modifications compared to much of the world. At a federal level, pretty much the only thing you cannot do to your own vehicle is remove emission equipment. The US does not even have universal requirements for insurance or safety inspections. And even in the states that do have safety inspections, there are typically very few pieces of safety equipment that are required.

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

#277

Post by pbronez »

scarface74 wrote: post #170
bitlevel wrote: post #89

They appear to not be trustworthy to be on our networks - so we should: 1. Not join them to our networks 2. Stop buying 'Smart TV's' 3. Get panels and a smart box that you can control I'm lucky enough to be able to direct ALL DNS through my router first. Nothing gets out without my say so. Not everyone has that capability, sadly, with home routers. The solution provided by the OP is a solid one - another would be to…

So which “smart box” would that be? Roku? Where the CEO outright said that they aren’t in the hardware business and they are trying to monetize via ads? Google? Need I say more Amazon Fire devices? See above with Google AppleTV? Sure I have a couple. They aren’t trying to monetize with advertising. But the HN crowd is anti-Apple.

AppleTV 4K all the way. Works great. Small, silent. Use your iOS device as the remote. Love itz

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

#278

Post by unreal6 »

Bud wrote: post #261

This isn't difficult: TVs should not be "smart". TVs should be incredibly dumb. They should be screens for displaying stuff. That's it. Nothing else. No network connection of any kind, no apps, no software beyond that necessary to do basic setup of how that screen works: brightness, input selection, etc.

I agree, now all we need is a television company who’s business model isn’t tied to surveilling its customers through its "smart features."

Quite honestly, by just airgapping your "smart" TV, you're effectively receiving a subsidy (as annoying as that may be)

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

#279

Post by DaniloDias »

erentz wrote: post #191

I’m kind of surprised there isn’t an OpenWRT style project out there to provide a replacement OS for common Smart TVs. At least I couldn’t find one. I’m obviously lacking in understanding the massive difficulties such a project would likely face. But it sure would be very nice to be able to replace my TVs firmware with something open source. I don’t want a dongle or extra box or extra remote. There’s a perfectly good…

Smart TVs have hardware backed security solutions to protect DRM keys.

Anyone who undertakes your proposal is going to have problems staying ahead of any jailbreaking mitigations when the companies motivation for security is maintaining relationships with content service providers.

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

#280

Post by caivvoacmh »

bjelkeman-again wrote: post #231
mikeryan wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to be really difficult to not get a smart tv pretty soon. You can, of course not hook it up to the internet. But pretty much all of the current TVs (particularly the good ones with nice displays) are going to be “Smart”. One reason for the recent huge price drops on TVs is the ability to subsidize the price by selling viewing data. It’s the new normal in the CE world.

In Europe I buy TVs aimed at office dashboard displays etc. No “Smart TV” with crappy software in my home.

Can you share what “dashboard display” you’re buying snd what’s the quality like compared to an actual TV? I just want a high quality screen ~55-65” to use with an AppleTV. I’m considering an LG oled cx because I don’t want android and will not use any of its features other than sound and display. I wish there was an oled display only for this use-case :(
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