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Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

krebsonsecurity.com

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Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#161

Post by SiempreViernes »

mikestew wrote: post #115
simojo wrote: post #108

We purchased a Chinese-made projector from Amazon, which was surprisingly inexpensive (~40 USD). Upon connecting it to the internet, it placed a constantly running feed of ads on the corner of the screen, even while movies were playing. There was no way to disable it either. Even though it's not a stick, it's a similar principle.

Upon connecting it to the internet… I hesitate to blame the victim here, but why on earth would you do that? “$40 Chinese-made” didn’t give you pause?

This is an age where even teacups demand internet connectivity to fetch firmware updates

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#162

Post by kube-system »

Pxtl wrote: post #142
zeafoamrun wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do. USPIS does not f around

Oddly they don't ever seem to prosecute the sites that profit from selling them. Funny, that.

Makes sense to me, the only place I've ever seen them personally advertised are overseas websites.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#163

Post by mmooss »

iamben wrote: post #126
Terr_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps they grew up in a time/environment where "if it was that bad they wouldn't be allowed to advertise it", and they're still using that old calibration?

I think that's a default for a lot of the older (and some of the younger!) generation, same goes for news and media. They grew up in a time where there was a practical barrier to publishing and (largely) laws behind you doing it. So they trust literally everything they read. I still don't think my folks can fathom you can spin up a very real looking newspaper website with fake articles in about 10 minutes.

I find younger people are more likely to trust whatever they read - social media rumors, LLM output, Reddit threads - and older people looking for credible sources.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#164

Post by Dylan16807 »

glitchc wrote: post #72
em-bee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why is running a proxy a bad thing? someone profiting off it could be bad maybe, but even that is good if it pays for my subscription. but compare running tor nodes, and especially exit nodes. that surely would be a good thing, so at least if you think tor is good then running a proxy should be the same and it should be normalized. doing it in secret without the user knowing is what's bad

Indeed without my permission is implied. Without it, you have no idea what traffic is being routed and could be on the hook for something nasty like CSAM.

Those are different issues. Permission doesn't mean you know what the content is, and lack of permission doesn't mean they're going to load anything weird or bad. Lack of permission implies worse ethics overall, but an operation focused on clicking ads will be loading relatively normal sites.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#165

Post by speerer »

bigmattystyles wrote: post #131
mikestew wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon connecting it to the internet… I hesitate to blame the victim here, but why on earth would you do that? “$40 Chinese-made” didn’t give you pause?

To be fair, everything is Chinese made. I would be even the Apple TV and NVIDIA Shield are made in China and if a state actor is determined to get a malicious payload in....

I think normally when people say Chinese made in this way, what they're really communicating is that there's no (meaningful) brand. All they know about it is that it is from China.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#166

Post by acdha »

mortenjorck wrote: post #3

In this case it’s actual malice, that the streaming stick is set up for residential proxy and ad fraud straight from the factory. But incompetence can lead to the same place if it’s a poorly engineered, un-maintained device with an old version of Android that will never be patched and is always one no-click exploit away from being commandeered into residential proxy and ad fraud.

I was trying to figure out why we saw so many fraudulent applications from Vietnam for a service which is restricted to the United States, especially because they were all getting rejected - it seemed like even the laziest spammer would lose interest in something they couldn’t monetize.

A guy in Vietnam mentioned that one of the largest ISPs there used these really dodgy Chinese modems which were so notoriously insecure that it was apparently common knowledge that you should replace them if performance was slow because that was a sign that yours was being used by a botnet. Apparently the cost of access to one of those nodes was so low that the spammers don’t even really monitor their bots.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#167

Post by buellerbueller »

To those who are OK with these devices: when you engage in corruption, do you have any moral standing against your politicians when they engage in corruption?

Both you, and the corrupt politicians, are eating away at the trust that underpins society. Certainly, you can argue, your bite is just a tiny one; the politician is eating the whole apple.

At the end of the day, everyone suffers from the decline of trust and casual acceptance of fraud.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#168

Post by dang »

Scroll_Swe wrote: post #90
GolfPopper wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're just meeting the standards American society has set.

[flagged]

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait, and also please stop using HN primarily for political/ideological battle?

These things are not what HN is for, and destroy what it is for, so we ban accounts that do them repeatedly.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#170

Post by eightysixfour »

SoftTalker wrote: post #145

> Despite repeated warnings from the FBI and security industry leaders about the security and privacy risks of using these streaming devices, major e-commerce providers like Amazon, Best Buy, Newegg and others continue to sell hundreds of different models and brands I scanned the comments and I didn't see anyone suggesting that these companies should share any responsibility for selling these harmful products. Why is…

Probably because we have little to no way to punish those companies. We can't even stop DJI from shipping their drones under other brands to get around the ban.
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