But a simpler solution that we are already seeing a bit is to simply require a network connection to function at all; for now, it's just a periodic check, but a persistent connection requirement is all but inevitable in the medium term.
Anecdotally inside my house, phones generally get no/weak cell service but WiFi is accessible anywhere in the house.
Obviously they could include both, but if it were relying only on cellular, my washing machine quite possibly couldn't get a connection
There’s no business model where the STB wants to route Internet traffic on behalf of the TV. Ads on the TV compete with the STB.
> or simply include a cellular modem of some sort.
Yes, an ad platform running over the lower bandwidth but cheap IoT service could justify including this hardware.
if it remains in that terribly insecure state by default until you give it a connection to a network, unfortunately the only thing to do might be to give it the password to a $20 mikrotik wifi router (in a 20MHz 2.4GHz channel) as an AP, so as to not pollute the empty radio channel spectrum in your house, that has no connection to the outside world. What an ugly hack.
Or give it the password to a secondary ssid set up on your main wifi, that goes to a dead end VLAN with no route to anywhere.
I invite everyone to buy dumb stuff, because if we don't, there won't be any market signal, and there all be smart TV, Fridges and so on. I don't have to explain to HN audience why this poses risks, problems, and the probability of intrusive ad ecosystem causing problems with stuff that should just work.
It's important that tech communities like this one push for it.
There are connected cars but iirc you have to buy a subscription or supply your own sim card to use the online features.
If specific units are costing them beyond income, they can probably have telcos disconnect them, or just remote-disable the communication.
How do you feel about a Sony smart TV?
If my smart TV gets hacked, what are they going to do? Take my Netflix and YouTube credentials?
I've got an LG TV, there aren't huge adverts. It's faster than switching on my PS5 to watch something.
It even has DLNA so I can listen to my music collection off my NAS.
If it starts hacking my network, what's it going to do? Public key SSH is pretty strong. And anything sensitive that could be snooped on would be HTTPS.
So this smart TV hack is going to require a second exploit to get into my windows PC? or Linux boxes?
If this screed is just about telegraphing your own wilful disregard for online safety and profound disinterest/absence of knowledge about what a locally connected hostile network device is capable of, then it’s hardly worth responding to.
However, if you’re trying to deliver an implied suggestion that “no-one should care”, then this actively harmful message deserves solid rejection. The consequences range from turning households into spam drones, to placing at-risk folks in physical peril through commoditised surveillance.
It remains an extraordinarily privileged and wonderful thing to live without fear of the capabilities of a corporate- or state-level actor. What’s not so wonderful is being reminded that many folks with this privilege lack the self-awareness to appreciate it.
I was responding to someone saying that their smart TV was full of adverts and how it's a requirement to block it. Where the convenience of the utility provided is greater than seeing an advert for a film on the menu page.
You've flipped it around to vulnerable people being surveilled by corporate/state level actors.
Why are Smart TVs singled out here? There's a tons of old Android phones that people use every day with sensitive information that are vulnerable to multiple exploits that will never get a patch.
Or Routers that never get a patch from their Vendor especially if it's a whitebox from an ISP and they've replaced it with a newer model.
It seems like Smart TVs have urban legends associated with them, I asked previously about the supposed "TV connecting to unsecured WIFI" thing that always comes up and nobody had any evidence:
I've no idea what your point is. But you do you.
Leverage access to pwn everything else on your network?
And how? So they have an exploit for the smart TV and then another device as well?
My Desktop/Laptop is supposed to be secured, and patched. Otherwise open wifi access points would be a bad idea.
Personally I think the the idea that the LAN is some walled garden where it's fine to relax security is a bad idea.
It is a bad idea, but it happens in practice. For instance, I can vouch for the security of my desktop (except for the times I run some random development stuff bound to 0.0.0.0, for convenient multi-machine access). I can't vouch for the security of my printer, or my IoT bridge. As long as it stays true, someone breaching a single device on your LAN is already creating extra security risk for your other devices.
Turn on the camera.
LG TVs from the past few years involve some level of voice control, so an attacker could be able to remotely turn on your microphone and listen in on conversations.
I have about a thousand times more confidence, that if I use my smart TV as a dumb screen connected to an Xbox one or PlayStation 4, that over a multi-year period of time, Microsoft and Sony will successfully keep their operating systems automatically patched, updated, and secure. As compared to any tv manufacturer.
I have seen people resort to things like installing pihole on their home LAN so that their smart tv will stop showing ads covering 1/3 of the screen whenever they use the menus. At least the advertisements that one will see on the home screen of an Xbox or Playstation are relatively small, unobtrusive, and can be ignored without bother.
In the future I think we will have problems with the fact that hdmi can also carry 100Mbps ethernet. Imagine if you plug your smart tv into some other device, intending just to send video to it, that gives it a dhcp lease and default route out to the internet. All in the name of consumer friendly "just plug it in and it works!" type functionality.