I think the best approach is to never, ever connect a device like a TV, Blu-ray player, etc to the internet. That's the only way they'll survive. So far no HDMI-based attacks.
Hotglue the ethernet port?
Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
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Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#22Are these running Tizen?
Probably. Samsung hired thousands of c++ developers in a particular low-cost country to build Tizen. You can't really hire that many quality developers that quickly, and it showed.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#23That's why: " What does a factory reset entail?" is a fascinating question. Everyone assumes you'll lose your settings during a factory reset, but what isn't as clear cut: Does it revert the firmware to whatever it was shipped with (bugs and all)? Some vendors do, but most vendors do not. A legitimate factory reset (inc. firmware) mechanism or USB boot/reflash would have likely saved Samsung considerable amounts of m…
I like the way you can erase and recover a Mac to a fresh install of MacOS, without needing a USB key or another working Mac. As long as you have an unmetered internet connection, you can recover to the same version of MacOS that shipped with the device.
That's a pretty horrid way. It used to be a time where you could just run a recovery partition to reinstall your operating system outside of re partitioning your hard drive.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#24Programming errors happen, but thats why I don't get, that companies still use programming languages, where such errors result in a crash vs. an error which can be handled and recovered from. A faulty XML file shouldn't render the whole machine unusable.
If they had used Rust, this whole thing could have been avoided!
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the way you can erase and recover a Mac to a fresh install of MacOS, without needing a USB key or another working Mac. As long as you have an unmetered internet connection, you can recover to the same version of MacOS that shipped with the device.
That's a pretty horrid way. It used to be a time where you could just run a recovery partition to reinstall your operating system outside of re partitioning your hard drive.
Every maOS install includes a recovery partition which works as you describe. However, if your hard drive is screwed up thoroughly enough, the recovery partition may not be accessible. In that case, you can still access Internet Recovery, which is located on some sort of ROM and allows you to redownload a working recovery image from Apple's servers.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like the way you can erase and recover a Mac to a fresh install of MacOS, without needing a USB key or another working Mac. As long as you have an unmetered internet connection, you can recover to the same version of MacOS that shipped with the device.
That's a pretty horrid way. It used to be a time where you could just run a recovery partition to reinstall your operating system outside of re partitioning your hard drive.
I've seen non-Mac laptops ship with a recovery partition but:
1. The recovery partition takes up some space, and
2. You (or malware) can mess up the recovery partition, and
3. The recovery partition doesn't exist if just upgraded the storage (e.g. replace the HDD with an SSD).
Macbooks have other failings (e.g. increasingly hard to upgrade/replace hardware yourself) but the operating system recovery works better than anything I've seen for Windows or Linux. Chromebooks have a factory reset key sequence, but that requires a working ChromeOS on the drive.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#27Programming errors happen, but thats why I don't get, that companies still use programming languages, where such errors result in a crash vs. an error which can be handled and recovered from. A faulty XML file shouldn't render the whole machine unusable.
What language makes it impossible to write if parse(config) == false then reboot?
In this case the XML file parsed fine, but the contents (specifically an empty element that the firmware expected to be populated) caused a crash.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#28Programming errors happen, but thats why I don't get, that companies still use programming languages, where such errors result in a crash vs. an error which can be handled and recovered from. A faulty XML file shouldn't render the whole machine unusable.
> still use programming languages, where such errors result in
Unfortunately no language or other framework or system can completely do away with programming logic errors.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#29I think the best approach is to never, ever connect a device like a TV, Blu-ray player, etc to the internet. That's the only way they'll survive. So far no HDMI-based attacks. Hotglue the ethernet port?
Don't forget to lock all of your consumer electronics in Faraday cages to keep the Weefees out.
Re: Samsung Blu-ray players bricked because of an XML config file
#30I think the best approach is to never, ever connect a device like a TV, Blu-ray player, etc to the internet. That's the only way they'll survive. So far no HDMI-based attacks. Hotglue the ethernet port?
That doesn’t work if your BluRay player requires an internet connection. Yes, they exist.