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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

#351

Post by ponker »

onion2k wrote: post #292
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.

That would essentially force people to buy two devices - one for receiving content to display and a second to display it. All your solution does is shift the problem on to the receiving device. It wouldn't fix anything, and at the same time it'd increase the cost and complexity for the user (by a very small amount admittedly).

The second device can be as cheap as $17 known as a “Streaming Stick” and treated as a throwaway component.

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

#353

Post by RedComet »

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.

But how would they track everything you watch on it then?

Can't have you throwing a Heat (1995) DVD without it being recorded in a database, can we? Sure, your smartphone probably pics up the audio, but it may just report that you're listening to Moby.

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

#354

Post by moepstar »

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…

There is/was SamyGo, a (partial?) OSS firmware for Samsung TVs...

Not sure how relevant or up-to-date their support is, but at least there is _something_ :)

https://www.samygo.tv

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

#355

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

shawnz wrote: post #230
encom wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As mentioned in TFA, configuring a firewall to redirect DNS traffic from broken or malicious software is also trivial. Or are you talking about hardcoding IP addresses?

There are plenty of other alternatives. The simplest (but least flexible) would be hardcoding an IP of the final server. Somewhat more sophisticated would be hardcoding an IP to a server with a REST endpoint that returns the real final IP. (Basically just like what DoH does, but without calling it DoH). Even more sophisticated would be hiding the final IP on some kind of public web service like Twitter or Github.

Note that malware of various sorts has done all of this for years. It used to be reasonably common to get command/control server info via IRC, basically DNS over IRC. DNS blocking has never been an effective network management strategy, and it never will be.

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

#356

Post by [deleted] »

ponker wrote: post #351
onion2k wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would essentially force people to buy two devices - one for receiving content to display and a second to display it. All your solution does is shift the problem on to the receiving device. It wouldn't fix anything, and at the same time it'd increase the cost and complexity for the user (by a very small amount admittedly).

The second device can be as cheap as $17 known as a “Streaming Stick” and treated as a throwaway component.

[deleted]

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

#357

Post by joshu »

mattnewton wrote: post #343
idiot900 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in luck. Buy a commercial TV, or a hospitality TV. For example: https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua Other TV manufacturers make similar products.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

Pro tip: you can Google for part numbers and find people who sell things.

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

#358

Post by iforgotpassword »

quineoa wrote: post #159
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and occasionally just highjack every single query to send you to a page saying you’re approaching your bandwidth quota It boggles my mind it's still a problem in some countries. Last time I saw this kind of notice it was in the nineties, and on a web server, definitely not on a client endpoint. People have had unlimited bandwidth for at least a decade now.

This has regressed. In the NetZero days you would be limited to some hours per month depending on your plan. Then came unlimited cable. And now we are back: my residential AT&T DSL connection is limited to 1TB per month in the Bay Area

Whoa. That would give you one day of laundry washing per month in the IoT age.

https://old.reddit.com/r/homeautomation/comments/k72lzq/sowh...

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

#359

Post by colejohnson66 »

mattnewton wrote: post #343
idiot900 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in luck. Buy a commercial TV, or a hospitality TV. For example: https://www.lg.com/us/business/commercial-tvs/lg-65ut640s0ua Other TV manufacturers make similar products.

Commercial signage tvs tend to be much more expensive and never really go on sale though. I can't even find out the price of this product without calling them to talk to a salesperson?

They’re more expensive because they need to make up the lost revenue from advertising and the likes. Or something like that.

Of course, there’s also the simple thing of “enterprise stuff costs more for no reason.”

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

#360

Post by ThePhysicist »

I haven't been able to verify this yet but I think my (2015) Samsung SmartTV tries to ping a specific Samsung domain to determine whether the device is connected to the Internet. Last weekend something must've happend to that domain because the TV told me it wasn't connected to the Internet and refused to start any app. The Internet connection (as well as the local Wifi connection), however, was perfectly fine.

So I expect the device (at least the "smart" functionality) to be bricked as soon as Samsung takes that domain down for good. In fact Samsung already removed 80 % of the gimmicks and remote features the TV came with, some of them didn't even last two years.

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