Android Ransomware Infects LG Smart TV

nilepez said:
I don't see why it matters. You don't have to use the smart TV functions. you don't have to give it access to your network and you can still use a Roku (or similar device). I set my parents up using their PS3 for Amazon, HBO and Netflix, even though at a minimum, Netflix is built into the TV.
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Manufacturers inflate prices for "smart" TVs, some people don't like paying for things they will never use.
 
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niconx said:
Manufacturers inflate prices for "smart" TVs, some people don't like paying for things they will never use.
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What top panels lack smart TV functionality? AFAIK, every OLED panel has it. I assume every LED with full array local dimming has it too. Is that not correct? To keep things easy, let's assume that the TVs are at least 60".
 
Ocellaris said:
Secure it for how long? Manufacturers aren't going to be on the hook forever to kee a user's browser secured. Google TV hasn't even been a thing for over two years, at some point support gets dropped and people move on.
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Secure it until EOL?

It's not like tv manufacturers gave their customers enough information about the neccessity to secure browsers. Imagine that giving an expiration date for your television. That would be cyclic consumption heaven for these companies.
 
M76 said:
Secure it until EOL?

It's not like tv manufacturers gave their customers enough information about the neccessity to secure browsers. Imagine that giving an expiration date for your television. That would be cyclic consumption heaven for these companies.
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EOL, lol. That's not happening and it is impossible given the numbers of these tv's they are churning out. They should start by not calling these smart tv to begin with. What a misnomer.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
You have to worry about it this is 2016.

As you can see with this case the manufacturers don't give a shit about security.

You have to make sure any device in your home is secure. The I shouldn't have to its their job attitude will guarantee you something like this will happen to you.

There is no more time for excuses get it done.
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Oh look, it is the current year. When was that a valid argument for anything?

The fact is that TVs are not computers. You can't reasonably expect the average Joe to know that this problem even exists.

So if someone started to hand out hand grenades to people uneducated in their usage, then it's the people's fault? I don't think so.

I think manufacturers became much more negligent than a few decades ago. They seemed to put much more effort in educating the masses in the proper use of the devices they're selling them. And providing support for said devices, beyond the RMA period. My country used to have laws that said you can't sell an appliance unless you provide at least 5 years of full service background for it even after you sold the last unit. But thanks to lobbying corporations there are no longer such laws. They only say that you must give 6 months of warranty, and beyond that everyone is on their own.
 
thesmokingman said:
EOL, lol. That's not happening and it is impossible given the numbers of these tv's they are churning out. They should start by not calling these smart tv to begin with. What a misnomer.
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That's exactly the problem. We gave free reign to these companies to flood the market with their shitty devices with planned obsolescence. And some say a completely free market is a good thing. Yes, for corporations to disregard sustainability and the interests of the consumer.
 
az_max said:
There should be. Have you seen the shit on TV lately?
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I think you confuse the device with the programming that's being broadcast on TV networks.
I own a TV device, but I don't watch TV programmes.
 
$5 says homeslice did some funky stuff with his TV and got unlucky. At this point, it's an old/cheap TV, throw it in the trash and go buy another, even 4K TV's are pretty cheap these days.

I fully understand the financial motivation behind ransom ware, but for a TV? if this is truly the case someone designed it this way, crooks must be dumb as shit, it's cheaper to trash the TV than pay them to unlock it.
 
I never understood the need for smart TVs. It's slower and less secure than a PC. Things like TVs, fridges etc should not go online for any reason in my book.
If my current TV dies, I'll probably never plug the new one into the network.
TV makers should focus on making TVs. Fix the HDMI FPS lock instead of doing a half baked version of an all in one PC. It silly to have a screen that goes 6000Hz and when you plug it in a PC you're stuck on 60Hz
 
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M76 said:
Like that knowledge is common among everyday people. Why you need security updates, and that this is even a thing.

That's not something an user should have to worry about in a TV. The manufacturer put a web browser on it it's their responsibility to secure it.
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american law: no it's not their responsibility to secure it because when you bought the TV the fine print clearly states they can stop supporting the applications or TV at any time they decide.. thus they're not on the hook for people doing shit they shouldn't be doing.

european law: they're responsible for it.
 
niconx said:
Why does a TV need an operating system that will be forgotten and never updated? Now remember that cars have operating systems these days. I sense incoming lawsuits.
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J3RK said:
Ransomware for cars! Send us $500, and we'll give you your steering back.

Transferring credits.... .... .... ....

Too late...
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But that would be illegal!!!
 
M76 said:
Thankfully a lot more R&D goes into cars than TVs. And there is no institute for TV safety either.
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R&D might go into cars, but they have no security and some link entertainment systems directly to the can bus for direct access to the engine/ecu for full control (disable breaks, accelerate, ect).
There are ports in your car that will allow any device to hijack the system.
These can devices already come in bluetooth form. It's almost trivial to plug one in there and have another cell phone device placed under the driver seat that can be remotely controlled.
It's fairly easy to enable uncontrollable acceleration while the person is on the highway.
In summation, car electronic security is a complete joke.
 
On another note, buying a smart tv is stupid. Just buy a flat dumb panel that's of good quality and buy one of those small boxes (apple tv, roku, fire tv, chromecast) and play with that.
It sounds like a good idea to get stuff integrated, but tv manufacturers aren't interested in supporting the built in smart components. They're more interested in selling tvs.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
A new LCD panel is getting black levels as good as a new Plasma would?
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OLED is very much superior in my opinion to Plasma. The new Quantum Dot displays are also fantastic at creating super dark blacks that don't ruin the tone of the scene at all, they're also much cheaper than OLED. Coupled with an HDR player and 4K BR, the picture quality is just phenomenal.
 
Gotta love how obvious user error means that Smart TVs and Android are terrible. What a collection of geniuses!
 
Sonicks said:
I love this.

Showcases how terrible a platform Android is. People can complain all they want about Apple's 'walled garden' but the alternative is shit like this. When it comes to Free and Open, well....you get what you pay for.

Hah.
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OK so user sideloads a shady APK (which unsurprisingly is really malware) to pirate movies and that makes Android a "terrible platform". Got it! Thanks for that clarification!
 
Vermillion said:
OK so user sideloads a shady APK (which unsurprisingly is really malware) to pirate movies and that makes Android a "terrible platform". Got it! Thanks for that clarification!
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Precisely. All the security in the world means nothing once a user decides to fuck things up.

While it's unfortunate that manufacturers don't support their products indefinitely, we all know that they don't and that wouldn't help in this situation anyway since the user decided to do something that the manufacturer would never assist, recommend, or even allow if they had the choice.

And the ability of hardcore users to modify Android is generally considered a feature, and just about every guide to modifying Android warns the user up front that if something goes wrong the device could end up useless.

If one wants to argue that the company should charge a more reasonable fee for resetting the device to factory settings (which, given the TV's age and the nature of the problem, probably requires an in-person repair), that's very fair. But turning this into a blanket indictment of Smart TVs is just dumb and lazy. It's something that would only make sense on a forum dedicated to trading apple pie recipes, not a forum where dudes get [H]ard talking about their custom PCs.
 
Babbster said:
Gotta love how obvious user error means that Smart TVs and Android are terrible. What a collection of geniuses!
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Die of a heart attack at an early age? Well, you should have lived a healthier lifestyle. Get shot? Well, you shouldn't have pissed off the other person. The point is, everything can be considered a user error. Televisions don't come with requirements about needing a specific acumen. Do some people make dumb decisions and screw up their TV? Of course. But we all made monumentally stupid decisions at one point in our life.
 
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Nytegard said:
Die of a heart attack at an early age? Well, you should have lived a healthier lifestyle. Get shot? Well, you shouldn't have pissed off the other person. The point is, everything can be considered a user error. Televisions don't come with requirements about needing a specific acumen. Do some people make dumb decisions and screw up their TV? Of course. But we all made monumentally stupid decisions at one point in our life.
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And? Since when is a whole category of consumer electronics responsible for one dummy - or a thousand - breaking their television?

Given that I don't advocate punishing the user for being stupid (beyond breaking their stuff, which is usually punishment enough), I don't know what your point is. MY point was that this thread is full of schmucks making wild generalizations about smart TVs based on a dummy going out of their way to install malware on theirs.

"Televisions are stupid. Anybody can hit their TV with a hammer and break it. Until they make televisions with unbreakable materials, anyone who buys one is an idiot."
 
Vermillion said:
OK so user sideloads a shady APK (which unsurprisingly is really malware) to pirate movies and that makes Android a "terrible platform". Got it! Thanks for that clarification!
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Yes, that's exactly it.

People don't know what they are doing no matter how savvy they think they are because you can never really know what's in a package installer before its installed.. An ecosystem like Apple's, or any closed and tightly controlled system, will prevent the classic 1D10T error that caused this guy's TV misfortune.
 
Sonicks said:
Yes, that's exactly it.

People don't know what they are doing no matter how savvy they think they are because you can never really know what's in a package installer before its installed.. An ecosystem like Apple's, or any closed and tightly controlled system, will prevent the classic 1D10T error that caused this guy's TV misfortune.
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Ohh yeah, kind of like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/b...ous-code-in-some-app-store-products.html?_r=0

It doesn't matter how tight you wrap your hands around an ecosystem, as long as there's a reason, it will be corrupted by outside influences.

Android gives you fair warning before you install random apks but like others have said, the tv manufacturers more than likely didn't keep the software up to date with the latest security updates and using an old browser to go to un-trusty sites may have caused an exploit to be executed.
 
Babbster said:
And? Since when is a whole category of consumer electronics responsible for one dummy - or a thousand - breaking their television?

Given that I don't advocate punishing the user for being stupid (beyond breaking their stuff, which is usually punishment enough), I don't know what your point is. MY point was that this thread is full of schmucks making wild generalizations about smart TVs based on a dummy going out of their way to install malware on theirs.

"Televisions are stupid. Anybody can hit their TV with a hammer and break it. Until they make televisions with unbreakable materials, anyone who buys one is an idiot."
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It's an arrogance of the developers. Should the user take some responsibility? Yes. Should LG take some responsibility? Yes. But people are idiots. That includes the geniuses at Alphabet who project their preferences towards how things should be on everyone else. And I wouldn't say it's a dummy going out of his way to install malware. When you leave it up to the general user, they're going to do dumb things. This is why you don't have developers be the main QA to their projects. They don't see that not everyone will go A->B->C. Sure, some people go out of their way. Some are mislead. I'm sorry, but just because someone wants to watch porn on their TV does not mean they're making a mistake and should pay dearly for it.

The #1 group who fall victims to scammers according to the BBB is not the elderly, despite what people think. It's *gasp* those tech savvy 18-24 year olds. 11% of Elderly compared to 34% of young people who think they know better.

http://www.bbb.org/council/news-eve...ials-more-likely-to-get-scammed-than-boomers/

“We’ve bought into stereotypes about scam victims – they’re usually seen as vulnerable and elderly, or gullible and poorly educated,” noted the paper’s co-author Emma Fletcher, product manager with the BBB Institute, CBBB’s foundation. “These stereotypes are strongly held… and they are wrong. We are all at risk, but younger and more educated individuals are actually the most likely to be scammed.”
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Optimism Bias

This is not taking about someone taking a hammer to their television, which would be hard to correct. It's about an easy to fix issue. The best way is to treat the lowest common denominator.
 
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I would still like a very nice monitor/TV. No need for a built in "smart" OS. Just enough to do scaling, and switching inputs. IE, let the screen display, and let the attached device do the processing grunt work.
 
If I had a smart TV I wouldn't even connect it to the Internet, dumbest idea ever.
 
M76 said:
Oh look, it is the current year. When was that a valid argument for anything?

The fact is that TVs are not computers. You can't reasonably expect the average Joe to know that this problem even exists.

So if someone started to hand out hand grenades to people uneducated in their usage, then it's the people's fault? I don't think so.

I think manufacturers became much more negligent than a few decades ago. They seemed to put much more effort in educating the masses in the proper use of the devices they're selling them. And providing support for said devices, beyond the RMA period. My country used to have laws that said you can't sell an appliance unless you provide at least 5 years of full service background for it even after you sold the last unit. But thanks to lobbying corporations there are no longer such laws. They only say that you must give 6 months of warranty, and beyond that everyone is on their own.
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ok then stick your head in the sand and good luck with that.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Well OLED isn't LCD and I said "new"
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Is anyone still making plasma tv's?

I know samsung last model was in 2013 and I think the same for panasonic.

And those were to two best brands for plasma's.

LG's plasma's was one level down from the top two.
 
At this time, plasma is all but dead. But OLED is certainly a worthwhile replacement.
 
Makaveli@BETA said:
ok then stick your head in the sand and good luck with that.
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If we look at it closer then that's what you're really doing. Pretending there is no problem.
I'm saying there is a problem and companies need to give better support to the people to fix it.
I'm sorry but stupid people being stupid is not something I can change, believe me I wish I could. Looking for solutions elsewhere is hardly sticking my head in the sand.
 
Hypergreatthing said:
R&D might go into cars, but they have no security and some link entertainment systems directly to the can bus for direct access to the engine/ecu for full control (disable breaks, accelerate, ect).
There are ports in your car that will allow any device to hijack the system.
These can devices already come in bluetooth form. It's almost trivial to plug one in there and have another cell phone device placed under the driver seat that can be remotely controlled.
It's fairly easy to enable uncontrollable acceleration while the person is on the highway.
In summation, car electronic security is a complete joke.
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That's true, there is a misconception out there that only self driving cars are susceptible for this kind of hacking. When in reality most cars made in the past 10 years are fully computer controlled. So a self driving car might even be less easily spoofed into uncontrolled acceleration.

Altough I haven't seen a car yet where you could access the ecu over bluetooth. I don't say it doesn't exist because obviously I don't know all the cars, but if it exists that's really stupid. So far you needed physical access to the car to change anything critical or access the ecu.
 
M76 said:
That's true, there is a misconception out there that only self driving cars are susceptible for this kind of hacking. When in reality most cars made in the past 10 years are fully computer controlled. So a self driving car might even be less easily spoofed into uncontrolled acceleration.

Altough I haven't seen a car yet where you could access the ecu over bluetooth. I don't say it doesn't exist because obviously I don't know all the cars, but if it exists that's really stupid. So far you needed physical access to the car to change anything critical or access the ecu.
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it requires a physical connection, but there are hundreds of odbii scanners that can write to the odbii port over bluetooth. Ex: https://www.amazon.com/Lolldeal-Com...1483107100&sr=8-10&keywords=can+bluetooth+odb
 
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M76 said:
If we look at it closer then that's what you're really doing. Pretending there is no problem.
I'm saying there is a problem and companies need to give better support to the people to fix it.
I'm sorry but stupid people being stupid is not something I can change, believe me I wish I could. Looking for solutions elsewhere is hardly sticking my head in the sand.
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I understand your point, but you are either a person that will wait around for someone to fix it for you or you fix it yourself.

I'm the latter.
 
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