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LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

krebsonsecurity.com

401–410 of 549 posts

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#401

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 b…

I recently had to replace my 5 year old LG OLED with a new one. The UX has been downgraded to an abysmal level. It's just unfathomable how such simple UI widgets take multiple seconds to load and how can QA say "ok, that's good enough". And don't get me started about the shoehorned "AI". A feature that, if you forget to turn it off will randomly interrupt whatever you're watching to talk to you in an almost unintelligible metallic voice. The build quality of the remote control also took a nose dive. Image quality is great but the same as my old TV, no advancements there.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My major sources of spam traffic are Chinese and Indian residential and mobile IP blocks. So there's that. Second, everybody screamed loudly when they were cracking down on file sharing traffic. You're saying spying on the citizens is ok when it's for this little reason over here, but not this one over there. It doesn't track. Not to mention most ISP abuse mailboxes are automated these days because they are flooded w…

There's no spying required. The NSA and ISPs can find open proxies through infiltration and report them to (e.g. abuse@comcast.com), then Comcast simply has to act on it robustly. ISPs already deal with abuse reports like this, the system just isn't being operated comptently.

What is Comcast going to do about it? Shut off a paying customer? Not likely.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's called a hyperbole. But I already have to babysit a NAS and a media server, and make sure the Playstation and Xbox are up to date and signed in, the last thing I want is another device just to watch netflix on. >>True with Roku Can the Roku remote change the input source on the TV?

> But I already have to babysit a NAS and a media server

Is the NAS TV related? Why do you need these? My media is all on my PC, and I don't consider maintaining that as part of my TV burden. I have to maintain it anyway.

And what maintenance do you need for the PS and XBox? You just turn it on when you use it, and let it auto-update.

> Can the Roku remote change the input source on the TV?

Fair point.

Normally, I change the source only once during a whole session, so I do that right in the beginning if I need to.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#404
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think there might be legal consequences I own an airgapped LG TV. Does anyone actually want to go class action/mass arb?

Airgapped is harder than you might think. If your TV finds an open network (neigbours?) it will use that one. And it is only a matter of time before they have cellular capabilities too.

Maybe 10 years ago. Very few homes have an open network today, ISPs all ship their routers with random passwords and/or force the customer to create a WiFi password during setup.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#405
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd think there might be legal consequences I own an airgapped LG TV. Does anyone actually want to go class action/mass arb?

Airgapped is harder than you might think. If your TV finds an open network (neigbours?) it will use that one. And it is only a matter of time before they have cellular capabilities too.

Aah yes, the ol' "Emergency Wi-Fi Connection" Nintendo uses to make really scary anti-piracy screens where they dial 911 and call the cops on you playing a pirated version of New Super Mario Bros U.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you saw a completely open residential wifi access point in the wild? This seems a little like worrying about getting Dodo poisoning.

> When was the last time you saw a completely open residential wifi access point in the wild? I have family who get frustrated with their home Wi-fi and about every other year conclude the solution is to unsecure the connection.

I'm not sure Comcast would even let me do that today, though I haven't tried. I gave up running my own home router and WiFi a few years ago, they just made it too much of a PITA.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) Does having TLS everywhere make this much harder?

Not sure how it would? Because the bad actors are remotely instructing infected computers/devices to make HTTP/TLS requests for them, so they appear totally normal to the other side.

In a hypothetical world where using TLS was abnormal, you could monitor the content of whatever the bots are doing for suspicious activity. And if they chose to use TLS anyway, the mere presence of of TLS could be considered suspicious.

Back in the real world, you can also passively fingerprint TLS handshakes to characterise the client device. Most of these proxy networks masquerade as "normal" clients, but if the type and variety of device fingerprints for an IP suddenly changes, that's a signal too.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#408

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 b…

I had an LG TV for work because my team developed some of the software on it. Similar experience - it got progressively worse (including the software my team developed, which in true Google fashion was deprioritized, discontinued, team laid off, and left to rot without anyone bothering to tell LG that it was no longer being maintained) until by the time I left that team it was nearly unusable as a "smart" TV and all…

> but for a TV, I just want a dumb screen that I can hook an HDMI cable to and run off a computer.

Look into Digital Signage displays. You pay a brickload more money but get (much) higher quality in return.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#409

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 b…

Also it's really important to tell every guest in your home that the TV is recording everything they say or you'll be violating wiretapping laws, as per the EULA.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#410
post #40

None of my TVs are connected to the Internet. That said, I could really do with a better open source fullscreen UI, especially since I mainly just want a web browser that works good. I'm just using KDE Plasma with a custom daemon to control the TV power state over an HDMI CEC adapter plus an old K830 keyboard. I'm, frankly, a bit annoyed by this whole thing; I'd rather have USB adapter RF wireless because it is simpl…

Mind sharing what HDMI CEC adapter you use? As for remote control - why would you want one for the monitor . For the PC I'm using an Air Mouse which is just a remote gyro-based mouse with keyboard buttons with a driverless USB dongle that acts like any other USB HID. I also have a miniature no-name wireless keyboard with a touchpad but rarely need to use it.

I am not home at the moment but I believe the setup I got working was the Club 3D CAC-1080 Display Port to HDMI adapter. The trick, as I understand it, is that these adapters support tunneling the CEC traffic to/from Display Port AUX, and many of the Linux DRM drivers support this. It has been a while since I actually set it up, but I don't remember it being particularly hard. I have a couple different adapters that theoretically support CEC I believe but that's the one I recall working.

> As for remote control - why would you want one for the monitor.

It certainly isn't strictly necessary, but it remains useful for input switching, and as a convenient backup option for power/volume. In the presence of a good fullscreen UI, I could see it being useful for basic directional input as well.

You can of course go the other way and handle input switching and all else via the PC, but that does mean if the PC isn't on nothing else works at all.

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