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LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#371

Post by jhallenworld »

I have a new LG TV, holy moly what a terrible user experience. Out of the box it requires you to create an LG account. PITA, but OK. Except I was supposed to set the location first, instead I set it after. So now you have the problem that you can not log into LG.com using my own email (even from a web browser) because it says: "incorrect country". I contacted their tech support about this, the only fix is to switch back the country code on the TV (to US_Other), then delete the account from there, then set country code to US, then create it again. OMG. I guess there is no fix if TV breaks before you do this..or if you forget what the original country code was. You are then forced to use a different email for any future LG product. I notice that all LG smart products use the same phone app, BTW.

Also, I bought an LG soundbar to go along with it. You would think they would work well together. The soundbar sounds fine, but the synchronization drifts over time. I've tried optical, LG's enhanced optical (allows you to control the volume) and HDMI eARC. In theory optical in PCM mode works better, but then you give up the volume control. Why should an end customer know about any of this? Lip sync is a simple problem to solve (timing pulses and code slipping will always work) and they have failed at it.

Also: their remote sucks (compared with Roku).

Anyway, so no respect for LG.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#372

Post by wyldberry »

jacobgold wrote: post #369

US residential proxies are the bane of the internet. They're the major source of social media manipulation and spam. Services can dramatically reduce abuse by blocking entire IP ranges based on country of origin, organization, or type (hosting providers). But a company can't block US residential IPs if it would also cut off many of their real customers. The US government (probably the NSA) should be cracking down har…

I'm glad someone else is saying this. Entire companies exist (that do a great job at it) that primarily surface this information in the form of "threat intelligence" for companies to make risk decisions based off of.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#373

Post by ge96 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #248
b3orn wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15 years ago people would've called it spyware.

20 years ago people would've called it a trojan horse. But then, by standards of two decades ago, every website that cannot legally avoid showing a GDPR popup would be classified as malware. As it should be today. Alas, standards have changed.

Funny some you can't say no, so I'm like alright guess I'm not going in

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#374

Post by dTal »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #224
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's Windows Update that's installing LG crapware upon seeing relevant hardware IDs This is also a misrepresentation. Microsoft has provided LG with a certificate to sign its driver packages with, and allows LG to upload packages to Windows Update, which includes a feature to install sidecar applications. Now, the spirit of this feature is that any application is meant to provide genuine configuration functionality…

> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect. If you're going to allow 3rd parties to install software on potentially billions of computers with far reaching privileges then you better have something in place other than 'just trust me bro'.

Why's that? "Just trust me bro" is the security model of all closed source, proprietary software. OMG, the program with secret source code is doing shady stuff? I'm shocked - shocked!

Hard to get worked up over "3rd parties" when even 1st parties cheerfully stomp all over the interests of their users. That ship sailed, caught fire, and sank to the bottom of the ocean the day Candy Crush appeared in the goddamned Start menu.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#375

Post by dpoloncsak »

jacobgold wrote: post #369

US residential proxies are the bane of the internet. They're the major source of social media manipulation and spam. Services can dramatically reduce abuse by blocking entire IP ranges based on country of origin, organization, or type (hosting providers). But a company can't block US residential IPs if it would also cut off many of their real customers. The US government (probably the NSA) should be cracking down har…

> Major US ISPs (Comcast, AT&T) should detect clearly suspicious activity coming from customer IPs and warn them to scan their computers, check their TV apps, and find whatever is turning their internet into a proxy. It's very bad for the customers too (slows things down, gets their IP banned, etc)

Is there incentive for them to? If anything, you might be paying extra for the data use and not even know it, right? They would lose money

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#376

Post by some_random »

jacobgold wrote: post #369

US residential proxies are the bane of the internet. They're the major source of social media manipulation and spam. Services can dramatically reduce abuse by blocking entire IP ranges based on country of origin, organization, or type (hosting providers). But a company can't block US residential IPs if it would also cut off many of their real customers. The US government (probably the NSA) should be cracking down har…

A crackdown would probably be an FBI responsibility, the NSA is not a law enforcement agency and absolutely does not have the authority.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#377

Post by wat10000 »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #194
petesergeant wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One can't expect that every driver package submission from every vendor is thoroughly vetted every time, this is a matter of trust and respect. Apple seem to do a pretty decent job of just that

The situation is very different on Macs. Apple control almost the entire hardware stack of the machines that macOS runs on. They make it an absolute pain in the neck to run any application not blessed by attestation. This attestation server is also frequently offline. They've also made it very difficult to write things like filesystem drivers, having completely pulled that functionality from more recent versions of m…

At least when I plug a monitor into my Mac, it doesn't install anything. And somehow it still works despite this.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#378

Post by BeetleB »

gambiting wrote: post #264
s1ncere wrote: post #30

Stop hooking up your LG tv to any network

The problem I have is....it just works. I'm tired of having to manage 50 different devices to let my son watch some Gabbys Dollhouse on the TV. Our LG CX is now 6 years old and it just works . I only need one remote for all the apps and sound, and I don't need to worry about another device. I've tried both Apple TV and Amazon Fire Stick, and both were (subjectively) worse experiences than just using the apps built in…

> I'm tired of having to manage 50 different devices to let my son watch some Gabbys Dollhouse on the TV.

Other than the TV, most people really have only one device (Roku, AppleTV, etc). Why do you need so many?

> I only need one remote for all the apps and sound,

True with Roku.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#379

Post by BeetleB »

0xblinq wrote: post #64

I'm very worried with all this bullshit around TVs. I've been running the same Samsung UE40C6530 since 2010. It's 16 f'ng years and the thing works flawlessly like the first day. No other electronic device in my life worked so well, during so long. But I'm about to move to a new home, and it feels like it's about time to get something more modern, at least a 4k TV. But I'm honestly totally lost at what to buy. I do n…

Same here. Same TV for the last 16 years. 1080p, but I'd rather keep it at that resolution than do the research and worry about smart TVs.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#380

Post by dzdt »

bombcar wrote: post #270
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Airgapped is harder than you might think Probably. The LG TV I have doesn't have cellular, but does have a removeable Wifi/Bluetooth module [1]. You have to disconnect a ribbon, unscrew the module and then pop it out. [1] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/3140596/Lg-Oled83g3-Series...

Sometimes those "modules" are just the antenna, and the Wifi is quite capable of connecting with no antenna at all.

Make it a tinfoil hat :-)
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