Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 575 posts

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#441

Post by inigyou »

frollogaston wrote: post #113
alistairSH wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a marginal effect, but fake clicks impacts the ad buyer, which then impacts their financials and pricing. The only winner here is the scammers running the fake affiliate sites on which these sticks are "clicking". Or, am I missing some facet of this enterprise?

What this misses is the person buying the TV stick doesn't care about the impact on the ad market. The bigger problem is residential proxying, because their IP will end up getting used for something bad.

And what does that cause? More captchas?

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#442

Post by inigyou »

acdha wrote: post #181
snickerbockers wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres the question of whether or not the fraudulent advertisement clicking is using enough traffic to inconvenience or impose fees upon the user but otherwise I agree with you and am tempted to buy one just to fuck with advertisers. Backdoors and spying are also a problem in theory except at this point you can't even trust "legitimate" companies on that front so it's a moot point.

> otherwise I agree with you and am tempted to buy one just to fuck with advertisers. How that actually works in practice is that your favorite sites make less money and your IP gets a bad reputation so you CAPTCHAs or outright blocked. There’s no “sticking it to the man” here, just contributing to the frictional grind making the internet worse for ordinary people.

My IP changes more than once a day. If Google captchas my whole ISP, good for them, hopefully it drives people away from Google.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#443

Post by inigyou »

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.

Has that ever actually happened? Has anyone gone to court for downloading child porn that was actually through a residential proxy?

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#444

Post by inigyou »

40four wrote: post #148
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

Because your home IP address is going to be associated with criminal activity. So if that’s acceptable “payment” then I guess there’s no issue

What concrete harm does this cause?

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#445

Post by inigyou »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #389
matheusmoreira wrote: post #105

That reminds me, I need to configure VLANs in my router so that all my trusted computers are isolated from all the other garbage that makes it into the network.

Doesn’t help when the garbage starts proxying illegal traffic through your home ISP.

What happens then?

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#446

Post by inigyou »

ur-whale wrote: post #207
matheusmoreira wrote: post #105

That reminds me, I need to configure VLANs in my router so that all my trusted computers are isolated from all the other garbage that makes it into the network.

Mmmh, I've always wondered ... as much as VLAN's are a very useful tools to - for example - route two separate LAN's traffic through a shared physical link ... are they any good when it come to security? I mean, I don't believe VLAN's were designed with security as a goal, and I wonder how "strong" the virtual wall between two VLAN's actually is? Can't a device on VLAN1 not peek at VLAN2 traffic if it sits on physica…

A VLAN is a virtual LAN. having two VLANs is like having two LANs but without as much duplicated wiring. It's quite well-supported and reliable.

You usually want to interconnect them at one central point, usually a router, and enforce a security policy there.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#447

Post by inigyou »

drdexebtjl wrote: post #28
m3047 wrote: post #20

Brazil. Last year I effectively blocked Brazil for a while. Ultimately I settled on three possibilities for the traffic I was seeing: 01: DDOS 10: Residential proxies 11: Somebody DDOSing residential proxies

I can’t prove it, but I live in Brazil and after getting a smart TV from LG, I started receiving challenges across all Google services, indicating they received bot traffic from my network. I only used apps from streaming services I actually paid for. I suspect these TVs either come with residential proxies set up from the factory, or they have such poor security that they’re instantly hacked. Either way, TV manufact…

LG has been in the news just this week for a whole lot of shady practices, which cast light on their other shady practices. Yes, residential proxying is one of them.

I don't think residential proxying is all that shady since groups like Cloudflare have made it a necessity. However, having it out-of-the-box on a name-brand device is extremely shady.

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#449

Post by inigyou »

crote wrote: post #213

LG televisions and monitors spy on their users and install unwanted software. Half of all smart tvs are running "residential proxy" malware. Google is banning sideloading but happily hosting apps using the Bright SDK. Sorry, but "your tv stick does ad fraud" is just about the most innocent thing I've seen in a while. Everyone in this market is doing the shadiest shit you can imagine. There are no good brands left, yo…

Is it even really malware if it's harming advertising networks and not you?

Re: Read this before you buy that TV streaming stick

#450

Post by inigyou »

autoexec wrote: post #154
mcphage wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not see problems with fake ad clicks and have no sympathy for ad companies. Yeah, it's like—a cheap streaming stick AND it poisons the advertising well? I'm pretty happy with my Fire TV Stick, but they're really tempting me here.

> Yeah, it's like—a cheap streaming stick AND it poisons the advertising well? Keep in mind that it's your IP and identity associated with those clicks and anything else criminals decide to do with your IP address. That means you're identity is being linked to things you may or not want to be known as being interested/involved in. The ads your TV stick clicks on can cause data brokers to include your name in lists of…

So you're saying it's going to weaken the presumption that an IP can be easily tracked to an individual? Even better!
Post reply on HN