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A comment on Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses.

Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by mzajc on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:32PM (#50447818)
This is a very neat and approachable write-up, but is the final result really a hack? If I understand correctly, you're getting an unprivileged shell on a device you own and have paired with your smartphone; more or less equivalent to installing a terminal emulator on your smartphone, except it's smart glasses in this case.

Should the ability to own one's devices really be treated as a vulnerability and reported to security teams?

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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by no-dr-onboard on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:36PM (#50447855)
"hack" on hackernews essentially means "I used my computer to do something". The overwhelming population of people here aren't security engineers, but rather developers.
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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by mzajc on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @06:38PM (#50447875)
I considered that, but the mentions of pwn2own and the bug bounty program has me thinking "hack" is used in the security/mainstream sense.
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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by serioussecurity on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:33PM (#50448767)
Hack as a term predates the concept of cyber security. It was originally "a quick and dirty solution that is clever"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hack

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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by stavros on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @07:03PM (#50448063)
How is it not a hack to do something on a device that doesn't let you do it? Yes, the device should let you do whatever you want, but it doesn't, therefore this is a hack.

I'm going to try it on my glasses, and disable autoupdating ASAP.

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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by Aurornis on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:36PM (#50448794)
Manipulating a system to get unintended access is a hack under any common definition.
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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by tejtm on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @09:45PM (#50449199)
The intent of the owner of the artifact is the only consideration. The wish of some previous owner is irrelevant.
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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by Aurornis on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:11PM (#50449351)
The part you’re missing is your assumption that only the owner of the artifact would attempt to get access to the system.
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Re:Hacking the meta ray-ban smartglasses by tejtm on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @10:20PM (#50449400)
Yes. Assumptions are being made.
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