The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
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Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#2The Ars writeup is blogspam, the linked original post has much more detail: https://cohost.org/ghoulnoise/post/5286766-do-not-buy-hisens...
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#3Solution #1: don’t buy trash hardware.
Solution #2: don’t give any IOT stuff access to your network. Internet access is plenty, use a VLAN.
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#4The Ars writeup is blogspam, the linked original post has much more detail: https://cohost.org/ghoulnoise/post/5286766-do-not-buy-hisens...
And of course, the comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40096253
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#5[deleted]
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#6Microsoft hasn't showered themselves in glory here either.
You shouldn't be able to DoS Windows by spamming fake devices on the network.
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#7Microsoft hasn't showered themselves in glory here either. You shouldn't be able to DoS Windows by spamming fake devices on the network.
This comment is stupid... It is like blaming the car manufacturer for killing people by making cars go fast.
Just because you can do it, is not the same as you should do it.
I would blame Hisense for makin crap...
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#8Microsoft hasn't showered themselves in glory here either. You shouldn't be able to DoS Windows by spamming fake devices on the network.
ideally not but I imagine the primary concern when writing that was making it work well with as many devices as possible. spamming thousands of fake devices is artificial stress testing territory. I'd like to see it better handled but I'd also like the focus to be implementing the feature in a polished and compatible way.
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#9Solution #1: don’t buy trash hardware. Solution #2: don’t give any IOT stuff access to your network. Internet access is plenty, use a VLAN.
Solution #3: don't give any IOT stuff access to the internet, you don't want your adversary [1] to be able to access their spy agents nor to bring down the grid by rapidly switching on and off all devices under their control. The suggestion to use a VLAN is good but not sufficient, that VLAN should not have access to the internet. Any interaction with IoT stuff should be mediated by software under your control, transmitting only such data as you want to be transmitted. This is a bit more work than just allowing the things to access the 'net but it mostly solves the problems of these devices being used to spy on you or to enable their use in schemes to affect grid stability.
How? Create a VLAN which has no access to the outside nor to the rest of your network. Add a dual-hosted gateway to the VLAN which interacts with the IoT things to extract any data you want (production data for inverters, temperature data for temperature sensors, etc.), feeds them whatever data they need to function, interacts with controls (set temperature on HVAC system, change mode, etc.) etc. Do not allow these devices to update their software automatically, this is something you want to take care of yourself. Since the devices are not directly connected to the 'net they are not exposed to whatever nefarious actors are out there to compromise them so any remote exploits should remain unexploited (other than by you, e.g. to install ESPHome or Tasmota). You get to sleep at night in the knowledge that your fridge may be trying to spy on you but is thwarted in its attempts and that little rocket man can not use your inverter or heat pump to wreak havoc on the grid.
[1] where 'adversary' is anything from the ad company masquerading as a hardware vendor to the eternal empire on the other side of the sea and anything in between
Re: The spam came from inside the house: How a smart TV can choke a Windows PC
#10Solution #1: don’t buy trash hardware. Solution #2: don’t give any IOT stuff access to your network. Internet access is plenty, use a VLAN.
Solution #3: don't give any IOT stuff access to the internet, you don't want your adversary [1] to be able to access their spy agents nor to bring down the grid by rapidly switching on and off all devices under their control. The suggestion to use a VLAN is good but not sufficient, that VLAN should not have access to the internet. Any interaction with IoT stuff should be mediated by software under your control, trans…
This is not very realistic. Just don’t buy iot stuff at that point.