Hacker News Reader

Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

> disconnect the wireless radio from the main board

Can you explain why you can't just not give the TV your Wi-Fi password?

Or are we worried about the case when the TV did have Wi-Fi (due to it being mandatory for some initial setup, say), but we don't trust that "Forget Network" and "Wi-Fi off" are actually honored?

Suppose the device surreptitiously reconnects to Wi-Fi in spite of being told to forget it. You may be able to block it in your router and failing that, change the access point password.

No?

View on HN

Xfinity runs an open WiFi for its customers. If you instead their gateway and don’t change anything (which is 99% of users) any Xfinity customer can get online. Several of my neighbors have them, and you can’t walk around in my commercial district without seeing the “Xfinity WiFi” SSID. It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.

So your TV just connects to random wifi networks? That sounds a bit insane.

That example isn't a random wifi network, it's the Xfinity network.

But also, you think tv manufacturers are sane? They have proven that they don't deserve the benefit of the doubt, in my opinion.

It doesn't sound insane, actually. Keeping in mind, Windows XP did exactly that for a while until everyone realized, "hey, that's a security issue". I would swear MacOS too, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

This is actually so very doable in US, cutting deal with those like XFinity.

But if the TV manufacturer is smart in their spying game, they could also be probing for any public SSIDs to connect to when no local internet access is setup.

Why make it so complicated? Just include an IoT cell modem with an esim.

If the collected data are worth it, sure. But the BOM of these things is stripped down as low as they can get it. A buck would be a big deal.

They don't have to cut direct with the operator. They can go up a little higher in the chain to a global "wifi offload" operator like Wefi.

https://www.wefi.com/wifi-offload

Then they can just get Passpoint access through a shitton of various endpoints.

>It would be smart for TV mfrs to do a deal with Xfinity and their equivalents world wide in order to sell viewer data to advertisers and receive “fresh” ads, even if the TVs are excluded from the residential network.

Doesn't exactly sound like a thing to be that concerned about if you never plug in your TV. If you buy a TV right now and never plug it in, how would it know about any future deal with Xfinity to connect to its open networks? And if it had a feature to connect to random open Wi-Fi networks right now, that wouldn't be hard to prove. My LG has never shown up in my Wi-Fi client list despite my open guest Wi-Fi. You can even test it by naming your guest network "Xfinity WiFi".

Taking apart your TV and pulling out the wireless radio sounds like absolute overkill to me. Feel free to do it if it makes you feel better. It will definitely not allow it to send data (over Wi-Fi) under any circumstance. I'm just not convinced that the alternative is that much riskier.

People believing even without proof that TVs connect to open WiFi. This would be trivial to prove if true, yet there is no evidence. In addition, it doesn’t make any sense for any of them to bother. 99% of consumers willingly connect their TV to WiFi because they want to use it with the built-in streaming apps. It wouldn’t make any sense for them to waste time capturing the 1% of users most likely to be evade them anyway just to cause a PR and/or legal fiasco.

Our Samsung fridge will mesh network with any Samsung TV specifically to exfiltrate marketing info, at least according to the manual. (The fridge even has marketing surveillance cameras in it).

I assume at some point, appliance manufacturers will start "partnering" with things that actually need WiFi for exfiltration purposes. Phones would be a good place to start.

That way, we'd need to either Faraday cage our friends' phones, not invite them over, or send marketing pervs video feed of our moldy pickles.

We're worried about it connecting to a neighbor's unsecured network or some sort of unpublished mesh capability for exfiltrating your data and downloading ads.

Setup an unprotected network that is isolated and you fully control, see if it connects at all.

That’s what is so insane about this conspiracy theory. It would be trivial to prove yet somehow no one has ever gotten around to it.

Because you can't possibly prove it won't happen in the future...

Easiest rule in security is to just disable unnecessary services. If you are never using the WiFi, you might as well disable the hardware completely

It may be trivial to prove again and again, but it is even more trivial to just disconnect it

To prevent RF transmission.

RF transmission is harmless. It's data privacy we're concerned about.

Seriously, unless you watch with your face a cm from the screen, RF energy is totally insignificant.

It might connect to a neighbor's WiFi if it has no password.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com