Samsung reminds rabble to scan smart TVs for viruses – then tries to make them forget Samsung on Sunday sent out a tweet urging people to check their Sammy smart TVs for viruses – and then deleted the message, as if someone realized that highlighting the risks posed by connected TVs may be bad for business. The Twitter post, sent via the South Korean manufacturer's @SamsungSupport account, remains preserved for …
The tweet contained a short video (00:19) that presumably showed the method. That didn't play when pressing the buttons on the wayback machine. One could probably look at the page source and find the URL of the video, which might still exist, but I don't own such a TV and I'm far too lazy to bother with that.
Incidentally, the tweets from Samsung in reply to this one are somewhat pathetic. People replied with sarcastic jokes that seeing advertising on television was a symptom of malware, and Samsung's response was "We are sorry to hear that you are having this problem. Please send us a DM with the model number of your phone." Maybe this is why they took the tweet down.
The right to be forgotten applies to both websites and search engines.
But many websites (public record) can't take the post down for legal reasons that outweigh the right to be fogoten, which is why the search engines have to delist the page for specific search terms.
But I would also guess that 99% of people wishing to be forgotten have never heard of the way back machine.
big_D,
The right to be forgotten is specific to search. Or actually isn't specific to search, it's just that the search engines were ignoring pre-existing law until forced to comply by the courts. And that judgement got given a shorthand name.
There is no requirement to delete data. But for things like spent convictions you're simply not allowed to keep mentioning them. So they've always been in newspaper archives, but because the newspaper industry has generally complied with the law for the last half century they didn't keep mentioning them on their front pages. But the info was alawys still there to find in old copies and archives.
Or.. you could make sure the T.V. is on it's own isolated network.
From my (limited) understanding of Samsung's T's&C's, running a Samsung T.V. through any ad blocking system such as a PiHole could be a violation of the agreement.
Also, reading the T's&C's of a Samsung Blu-Ray player made mention that laws were held and adminstered under Korean jurisdiction.
Again, I could be wrong as I am not an attorney and in no way could fully understand any of it.
(Which is the way it is intended I believe)
Either the people designing the systems are incompetent or such systems are designed with built-in security flaws in order to facilitate easier cracking by the spooks.
El Reg Mar 2007: “Amazing new WikiLeaks CIA bombshell: Agents can install software on Apple Macs, iPhones right in front of them”
Nope, not stupid, just economical with money and time.
The systems contain basically a computer with OS. You know, like e.g. a cellphone, tablet, notebook, netbook, HPC cluster... Yes, manufacturers could in principle roll their own hard- and software, but just taking a standard solution is so much easier, cheaper, quicker, and likely[1] to be more secure than a system that has all the features you[2] want and that has to be developed anew. These will have bugs and security holes. Hell, a network switch has a limited OS running on specialised hardware and it still can have security holes.
The only solution for the customer is not to play: do not buy a "smart" TV and hook up the "dumb" TV (which is just a screen) to a regular PC running a normal OS of your choice with regular security updates if you want any "smart" features.
[1] if the system is patched / updated regularly. This should be possible if it was really an off-the-shelf solution - which is a bit of a theoretical musing. In principle Android is standard and off-the-shelf (that is: the core of Android, but every vendor puts in stupid stuff), and look at the state of security updates...
[2] well, any of: the manufacturer, customer, or even three-letter-agency, but I disgress
If you're TV's OK, don't forget your microwave.
A quick 20 minute blast on high should not only kill malware but also any bacteria in the microwave too. If you want to be really careful, don't put anything in the microwave during the cleaning cycle to ensure maximum cleanliness.
Chant "fire cleanses everything" if you think it helps...
Maybe if ya didn't make your TV's vulnerable to hacking by government agencies we wouldn't need a friggin telly antivirus.
My family bought a smart TV, and quickly realized that they did not want any of its smart capabilities. It has been told to forget the network, the WiFi credentials were changed, and I added a firewall rule to block any packets coming from the TV's MAC address in case it has the smarts to read my mind and guess the new password. It has been relegated to a simple panel with an unused processor somewhere in it.
"Yes, you have to log into BBC IPlayer before you're allowed to watch any programmes these days, just so that they can log your viewing habits."
It's also part of the TV licensing enforcement. You need a licence to watch live/near live broadcasts or streams AND to watch iPlayer. If you only ever watch, eg Netflix or Amazon, then you don't.
Am I the only one agreeing with some of the more vocal responses to this that involve basically holding the manufacturer responsible for all patching, scanning, updates, etc. for their Internet-connected product for the physical life of the product (meaning, if you remote brick it early to save maintenance, you get to pay out the sticker price of the item at purchase back to the owner)?
This is a product that is locked to prevent the owner from tinkering with it in any way (DRM etc.). I'd go so far as to say that requiring the "owner" of a product like that to do anything should be illegal --- it either works, or it doesn't and the manufacturer gets sued for creating the botnet. Isn't that what DRM is, that the vendor always knows best and the idiot user can't be trusted to follow the law? Door swings both ways -- idiot manufacturer should be sued for every bit of damage the botnet(s) do, every privacy invasion, etc. as they *explicitly* locked the end user out and put themselves in the drivers seat here, then basically jumped out of the car and said "passenger, it's all your responsibility now but you can't touch the steering wheel or pedals!".
I have a dumb telly. I have zero interest in upgrading to a "smart" telly unless I can dig around in its guts and reprogram it the way I want. If that's not allowed, I have a shelf of good books, a nice game system that works just fine offline, and plenty of other ways to keep myself amused not involving telly at all.
Samsung tends to stop providing updates two years after manufacturing. So you get a virus on your TV. Sure you can reset the TV back to factory, but without updates what's to stop reinfection? People do not throw away perfectly good appliances every two years. If manufacturers are going to insist on jamming full computational abilities and preinstalled applications into durable goods then they need a long term plan for maintaining those appliances beyond the first two years.
Or just stop with the embedded "smart" features and leave content to external devices.
People do not throw away perfectly good appliances every two years.
I know more than one person who does, at least if I include all those who buy a new appliance and put the old one in a cupboard until the cupboard is full of old appliances and they throw them all out simultaneously.
>Samsung tends to stop providing updates two years after manufacturing.
If only. My old-ish Sammy TV regularly updates its long list of bloatware I never use (un-removable all, natch) during which time it is unusable. Of course it has to install at startup rather than shutdown. Sometimes you can’t really tell it’s doing that so its smart functions look dead (I use Netflix and Amazon).
The one thing they couldn’t be bothered to do was providing a new Youtube app when Google sunsetted the (Flash-based?) old one. No more Youtube.
Bought it in a fit of open mindedness soon after they were battling Apple’s rounded corners. Never again. Only thing is people don’t seem all that happy about competitors like LG.
I hope there are big bucks waiting for the fist manufacturer to twig that a lot of people are happy to buy a dumb screen and plug their smartness into it. Making the smartness independently upgradable from the display.
Funny, but "Smart monitors" never caught on.
My 5 year old LGs "smart" features are never used now. Chromecast does me fine.
Do you mean that I should take my own $OLD_LAPTOP and install Linux, a TV capture card, MythTV, and cheapo IR/Bluetooth remote control? That's so 2005! (/s, of course).
Smart TVs are just a polished implementation of "computer hooked up to TV", except that it's worse as for support after EoL.
There’s a sizeable energy inefficiency consideration if everyone had to run (hours a day) a full-fat PC to add basic Netflix/Amazon/Youtube support which a smartphone-type system-on-a-chip can handle using a trickle of power. Chromecast is good - I use it to watch Youtube - but ... Google, and it doesn’t support competitors like Amazon.
It’s an Idiot Box. Don’t want to have to fiddle overmuch with it, rather fiddle on actual software and servers.
Ah, brings back memories of the days when all a TV had was a (rotary) channel selector, a brightness, contrast and volume control on the front.
Not even color or a remote control - you had to get up and walk to the TV to change channels.
And, all it had on the back was a power cord and a 300ohm ribbon connector or a 75ohm cable antenna socket.
Here's a picture of me sitting next to one of our long lost TV friends - and a black & white one as well (taken around about 1971 or 72, we didn't get color TV in Australia until 1975).
https://i.imgur.com/GgJWPvC.jpg
I miss those days... only had 3 channels to choose from back then. But, at least the programs on all 3 were worth watching unlike today with dozens of channels and rubbish on all of them most of the time.
all a TV had was a (rotary) channel selector, a brightness, contrast and volume control on the front
The b&w set that provided Saturday-morning cartoons and weekday-afternoon educational programs in my youth also had vertical hold adjustment, horizontal hold adjustment, and fine-tuning knobs - the last particularly necessary for always-chancy UHF programming in the US.
Every few years I think about getting a new TV (monitor). Every time the options get less. I can't get one with a power switch or one which I can use disconnected from the internet with a usable programme guide. I have not been able to find a suitable (Big enough) PC monitor that I could use with a separate tuner/PVR and still be able to control the basics like volume, picture settings etc remotely - why not?
I guess I might be able to find a professional broadcasters' monitor if I searched hard enough and had a big enough stash of cash.
What does the BBC do with its old ones when they get dusty?
Back in the day, my RCA CTC-120 chassis 24-inch television needed to have the solder re-flowed about once a decade or risk severe picture key-stoning. It was half an hour's job, including discharging the HV anode, to prevent a shocking experience, and I'd usually perform convergence at the same time. I personally haven't owned a TV in 20 years, but I suppose downloading software updates and scanning for malware once or twice a month is no worse than changing out the 6FQ6 or 6DJ8 tube from back then. The fact that you no longer have to deal with a flyback coil just to perform maintenance on your TV these days is amazing! What will they think of next!?
Do not want.Do not need. Samsung do win some points for honesty, which they lost when they deleted the comment.
Samsung, like every IoT maker, should get their head out their backside and realize they are now a (specialist) computer manufacturer.
Viruses and security are now part of you design problems.
TV's with endless f**king on screen menus are bad enough but then plugging them into the internet for bonus fu**witedness. Up with this s**t I will not put.
When the term "flat-screen" first started appearing it was referring to the front of the tube being less curved.
Then when actual flat screens came out, it began to be used in that sense.
Now all TVs are "flat-screen" unless you are talking about an ancient CRT.
But still various media use the term as a prefix, usually and bizarrely to denote some form of luxury, eg. when complaining that prisoners have "flat-screen TVs".
Hmm, actually I think I've seen new curved screens in the shops now, so maybe "flat-screens" is coming to mean "old-fashioned"?
Ever since I was a teenager, my dream of an ideal AV system was a huge screen with nothing else, not even speakers.
It wasn't a novel thought - this was the time hi-fi seperates were all the rage - I just couldn't see why it wasn't taken further.
These days, it's even more relevant - TV's come with software thaf is rarely updated, if ever, and services that tend to be defunct after 6 months.
Why bother, when you can get a "smart box" for £30 and even if it's not updated, replace it with a new one after a year. The screen should survive far longer than that!
The only "smart TV" that I have ever owned or liked is an older commercial LCD from Sammy. The smarts come from a fully integrated x64 PC living under the covers. I control the OS choice and the software stack, and the TV makes sure that the PC boots when the telly is turned on, shuts it down when the screen is turned off and sets the input accordingly. Magic.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
