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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

#441

Post by Tor3 »

kyriakos wrote: post #226
Tor3 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From previous discussions there are apparently TVs which will connect to any open network nearby, if it can find one. I got myself a normal, non-smart Philips 49" TV some ten years ago, it's good, but I don't expect to be able to find something similar anymore.

Who runs open WiFi networks in 2026?

Way less than before, but, as an example, the supermarket very close to my home (in my home country - my other comment elsewhere is about our home in Japan) has an open network. It's presumably so that when customers are there then the supermarket's app, on customers phones, will have access to coupons and the like. My own phone utilizes that (I don't use a data plan with that phone, as I mostly use it for calls and not having a data plan saves me a ton of money - it's basically free).

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#442

Post by kyriakos »

Tor3 wrote: post #441
kyriakos wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who runs open WiFi networks in 2026?

Way less than before, but, as an example, the supermarket very close to my home (in my home country - my other comment elsewhere is about our home in Japan) has an open network. It's presumably so that when customers are there then the supermarket's app, on customers phones, will have access to coupons and the like. My own phone utilizes that (I don't use a data plan with that phone, as I mostly use it for calls and…

I've seen a lot of open networks in stores, cafes and malls in my country too but on most occasions they at least take you to a captive portal to accept their TOS or ask you to enter an email address to spam you later, they are not just connect and browse with zero interaction.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#443

Post by Tor3 »

permo-w wrote: post #240
kyriakos wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who runs open WiFi networks in 2026?

Japan is full of them

I haven't seen that many actually. In our neighborhood in Japan the area is crowded with home networks, they're all encrypted.

And when I've tried navigating in large cities (Tokyo included) and found that my stupid tablet's GPS relied on getting the ephemeris data from the internet, and never through the GPS itself, I couldn't start navigating until I connected to something.. and I spent hours trying to find an open network, unsuccessfully. Happened twice, the second time in Nagoya. No open networks. Well, Starbucks have that, but then you need to find one.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#444

Post by negura »

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…

gosh, thanks for sharing your US national security concerns. as a former Googler. straight out of San Francisco. the world's epicentre of "win-win" tech innovations

> But a company can't block US residential IPs if it would also cut off many of their real customers.

since when do companies care whether they cut off real customers? i've been paying for residential proxies for everyday internet browsing for nearly 6 months. because it's the only way to pass the captcha service of another famous company headquartered in San Francisco

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#445

Post by ButlerianJihad »

Tor3 wrote: post #220
qq66 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't ever give your network credentials to the Smart TV you've closed off 99% of the attack surface.

From previous discussions there are apparently TVs which will connect to any open network nearby, if it can find one. I got myself a normal, non-smart Philips 49" TV some ten years ago, it's good, but I don't expect to be able to find something similar anymore.

Zealous Autoconfig https://m.xkcd.com/416/

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#447

Post by matthewmacleod »

blagie wrote: post #370
TeMPOraL wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I don't think you've read GDPR. In Europe (at least my part), *every* organization has a GDPR policy you need to agree to. Your child's school. Summer camps. Etc. Most are also conservative and reasonable. What's broken is the GD…

That was exactly the point OP was making.

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#448

Post by ButlerianJihad »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #186
ButlerianJihad wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that's really bad! No, it’s fair, and probably federally regulated. You wanna run a business? Then get a business license, pay your business taxes, and sign up for a business Internet connection. That’s what they’re made for. Then run your servers to your heart’s content.

What if I don't want to run a business? I just want to run a website!

Okay, I can understand that there are instances where people want to run a website or some kind of server, recreationally, or out-of-pocket, or cooperatively, outside of a business/corporate context.

But I'd say it's fundamentally a market segmentation. ISPs don't want consumers running servers on consumer connections. Think about it. This allows ISPs to plan deployments better. Consumers should be, well, consuming downloads and content rather than distributing it upstream. Therefore, for example, my DOCSIS connection is 10x downstream vs. upstream. And an ISP's consumer-level backbone can be planned much more effectively when consumers are consuming downloads.

If you wanna run a server then go colocate it, or run it as a legit business. You've got to accept some market segmentation here.

I purchased a new HP printer recently, and it's firmly a SOHO printer. Perhaps more powerful than I really needed. And guess what? I found out that it's not really supported by Chromebook or Android drivers. So... I've got to bounce all my print jobs through Linux! Ah well!

Re: LG to ban residential proxies from smart TV apps

#450

Post by dns_snek »

krige wrote: post #256
dns_snek wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a weakness that they targeted and exploited, it's a feature that was purposefully implemented by Microsoft.

If you're trying to say that Microsoft implemented a method of delivering specifically malware executables to every PC, I've got a bridge to sell to you. Let's not diminish LG's part in all this.

No, what I'm saying is that Linux isn't safer simply because "it's not relevant enough to be targeted", it's safer because it doesn't offer mechanisms which could be abused to do this.

Nobody is diminishing LG's blame, LG is guilty of installing malware, and Microsoft is guilty of being grossly negligent and facilitating it. Microsoft implemented this feature knowing that it would eventually be abused for something like this, and it's bad enough to be indistinguishable from malice.

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