5 ms·

This might not be adequate for keeping your TV off the Internet, they've been rumored to connect to unsecured WiFi.

by nix0n 4y ago

lancesells 4y ago
Has anyone ever confirmed this? I did a search and only found a thread on HN asking the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350
- netsharc 4y ago
  Feels like some beliefs like this are like the Korean superstition that leaving the fan on while you sleep will kill you.
  - closewith 4y ago
    In the UK, BBC vans drive around with unsecured WiFi networks to see if any houses have smart TVS connect, and then fine them if they don't have a TV licence.
    - kllrnohj 4y ago
      Source? That sounds both fascinating and fake.
      - closewith 4y ago
        It was a joke, based on the alleged unlicensed TV detector vans that have roamed for decades and which are nothing more than a scare tactic to get people to pay the TV license. As of 2016, the BBC still claimed they work, though, even for non-TVs: > 1.37 The BBC’s final detection and enforcement option is its fleet of detection vans. Where the BBC still suspects that an occupier is watching live television but not paying for a licence, it can send a detection van to check whether this is the case. TVL detection vans can identify viewing on a non‐TV device in the same way that they can detect viewing on a television set. BBC staff were able to demonstrate this to my staff in controlled conditions sufficient for us to be confident that they could detect viewing on a range of non‐TV devices. From: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/British-Broadcasting-Corporation-Television-Licence-fee-Trust-Statement-for-the-Year-Ending-31-March-2016.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/British-Br...
        techdragon 4y ago
        "TV Detection" is actually just a civilian use of Radiation Intelligence, the kind of RF emanation that the USA has the entire TEMPEST hardening requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) in order to prevent nation state attackers from being able to snoop data from their electronic equipment. This is a very real security principle and plenty of demonstrations out there to show how much information can be leaked from unshielded systems. You can check out gr-tempest which uses modern software defined radio hardware https://github.com/git-artes/gr-tempest https://github.com/git-artes/gr-tempest. You can see pretty good demo of it here https://old.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/q59ofn/i_was_finally_able_to_get_grtempest_working_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/q59ofn/i_was_finall... The basic truth is that over time it got harder and harder to build "simple" detectors to work out if people were using their TVs to watch the BBC (and this is the tricky part, a valid argument is "I don't watch the BBC", so they need to detect BBC channels being displayed on the TV and not detect other channels) and so it gradually became a less and less directly useful tool for the license enforcement teams to use, so it has sort of transformed from a genuine relatively accurate tool that doesn't need too much equipment, into a sort of mythical boogeyman that gets used to scare people into paying for the license, potentially backed up by cutting edge signals intelligence type equipment to occasionally prove it can be done and maintain the story. The wikipedia article is actually pretty good for explaining how the older detection mechanisms worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van#Detection_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van#Detection_tech...
        closewith 4y ago
        There was never an operational TV detector van (although there are dummy vans deployed). It was not an implementation of any RF technology. It was purely a PR campaign to improve compliance - obviously an effective one given your response.
        techdragon 4y ago
        I really can't agree with that view. While the modern versions are (and I did try to acknowledge this with my point about it being mostly a scare tactic now) extremely implausible. There exists ample evidence about how the old ones, particularly the first few generations, worked, all of which is rock solid electronic/radio technology theory stuff. The wikipedia article I linked to references three separate old government documents over the span of nearly 20 years, each detailing subsequent method used for the first, second and third generation of TV detection equipment. - First Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej195207/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej195207/page/n1/mode/2up - Second Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej196301/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej196301/page/n1/mode/2up - Third Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n13/mode/2up I'm not going to bat for the notion they have vans roaming the streets today with some sort of magically cutting edge NSA/CIA/GCHQ grade ELINT suite packed into a van that can sniff the digital signals leaking from the wiring from a flatscreen TV and run it through some sort of BBC only content ID while compensating for whatever distortions would obviously be introduced (and can be seen in the demo video in the reddit article I linked to) ... this notion is basically absurd, its clearly a scare tactic. No one is practically using the sort of technique documented by this 2013 research paper ( also linked from the wikipedia article, and showing with attached pictures that you can still theoretically do this sort of thing to a "modern" TV ) https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/temc2013-tv.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/temc2013-tv.pdf to "detect" people watching The BBC on flatscreens TVs bought in the last 2 decades. Whats not absurd, is that this clearly used to be pretty easy to do, like the circuitry for the first gen detector, could be built by any reasonably confident radio equipment person and definitely would work to detect the sort of TVs and TV broadcast technology used back in the early 50s. You can see it get more complex over time in each of the linked documents and obviously as it gets more complex it gets more expensive, and so you would probably see less of them built and operated... if they had a version that could actually do it in the 90's or early 00's then it probably cost them millions per van, so why would they ever risk that leaving the depot on off the chance it gets T-boned in an accident. This is classic mythos progression stuff, where the slightly extraordinary gets told and retold with each version seeming more implausible, turning ordinary events into mythic tales of heroes larger than life battling the gods... Except in this case its progressively more complicated and implausible sounding technology transforming into genuinely impossible for them to pay for it with their budget, transforming into a lie, into a myth, into a complete fabrication and conspiracy.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    It shouldn't. Fan death is very impossible, while connecting to open wifi is just "they probably don't bother".
- somat 4y ago
  I run a public wifi node and can confirm that the only traffic it has seen lately is the neighbors samsung tv phoning home.

This might not be adequate for keeping your TV off the Internet, they've been rumored to connect to unsecured WiFi.

by nix0n 4y ago

This might not be adequate for keeping your TV off the Internet, they've been rumored to connect to unsecured WiFi.

Has anyone ever confirmed this? I did a search and only found a thread on HN asking the same question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25275350

netsharc 4y ago
Feels like some beliefs like this are like the Korean superstition that leaving the fan on while you sleep will kill you.
- closewith 4y ago
  In the UK, BBC vans drive around with unsecured WiFi networks to see if any houses have smart TVS connect, and then fine them if they don't have a TV licence.
  - kllrnohj 4y ago
    Source? That sounds both fascinating and fake.
    - closewith 4y ago
      It was a joke, based on the alleged unlicensed TV detector vans that have roamed for decades and which are nothing more than a scare tactic to get people to pay the TV license. As of 2016, the BBC still claimed they work, though, even for non-TVs: > 1.37 The BBC’s final detection and enforcement option is its fleet of detection vans. Where the BBC still suspects that an occupier is watching live television but not paying for a licence, it can send a detection van to check whether this is the case. TVL detection vans can identify viewing on a non‐TV device in the same way that they can detect viewing on a television set. BBC staff were able to demonstrate this to my staff in controlled conditions sufficient for us to be confident that they could detect viewing on a range of non‐TV devices. From: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/British-Broadcasting-Corporation-Television-Licence-fee-Trust-Statement-for-the-Year-Ending-31-March-2016.pdf https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/British-Br...
      - techdragon 4y ago
        "TV Detection" is actually just a civilian use of Radiation Intelligence, the kind of RF emanation that the USA has the entire TEMPEST hardening requirements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename) in order to prevent nation state attackers from being able to snoop data from their electronic equipment. This is a very real security principle and plenty of demonstrations out there to show how much information can be leaked from unshielded systems. You can check out gr-tempest which uses modern software defined radio hardware https://github.com/git-artes/gr-tempest https://github.com/git-artes/gr-tempest. You can see pretty good demo of it here https://old.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/q59ofn/i_was_finally_able_to_get_grtempest_working_with/ https://old.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR/comments/q59ofn/i_was_finall... The basic truth is that over time it got harder and harder to build "simple" detectors to work out if people were using their TVs to watch the BBC (and this is the tricky part, a valid argument is "I don't watch the BBC", so they need to detect BBC channels being displayed on the TV and not detect other channels) and so it gradually became a less and less directly useful tool for the license enforcement teams to use, so it has sort of transformed from a genuine relatively accurate tool that doesn't need too much equipment, into a sort of mythical boogeyman that gets used to scare people into paying for the license, potentially backed up by cutting edge signals intelligence type equipment to occasionally prove it can be done and maintain the story. The wikipedia article is actually pretty good for explaining how the older detection mechanisms worked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van#Detection_techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van#Detection_tech...
        closewith 4y ago
        There was never an operational TV detector van (although there are dummy vans deployed). It was not an implementation of any RF technology. It was purely a PR campaign to improve compliance - obviously an effective one given your response.
        techdragon 4y ago
        I really can't agree with that view. While the modern versions are (and I did try to acknowledge this with my point about it being mostly a scare tactic now) extremely implausible. There exists ample evidence about how the old ones, particularly the first few generations, worked, all of which is rock solid electronic/radio technology theory stuff. The wikipedia article I linked to references three separate old government documents over the span of nearly 20 years, each detailing subsequent method used for the first, second and third generation of TV detection equipment. - First Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej195207/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej195207/page/n1/mode/2up - Second Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej196301/page/n1/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej196301/page/n1/mode/2up - Third Gen - https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n13/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/poeej196910/page/n13/mode/2up I'm not going to bat for the notion they have vans roaming the streets today with some sort of magically cutting edge NSA/CIA/GCHQ grade ELINT suite packed into a van that can sniff the digital signals leaking from the wiring from a flatscreen TV and run it through some sort of BBC only content ID while compensating for whatever distortions would obviously be introduced (and can be seen in the demo video in the reddit article I linked to) ... this notion is basically absurd, its clearly a scare tactic. No one is practically using the sort of technique documented by this 2013 research paper ( also linked from the wikipedia article, and showing with attached pictures that you can still theoretically do this sort of thing to a "modern" TV ) https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/temc2013-tv.pdf https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/temc2013-tv.pdf to "detect" people watching The BBC on flatscreens TVs bought in the last 2 decades. Whats not absurd, is that this clearly used to be pretty easy to do, like the circuitry for the first gen detector, could be built by any reasonably confident radio equipment person and definitely would work to detect the sort of TVs and TV broadcast technology used back in the early 50s. You can see it get more complex over time in each of the linked documents and obviously as it gets more complex it gets more expensive, and so you would probably see less of them built and operated... if they had a version that could actually do it in the 90's or early 00's then it probably cost them millions per van, so why would they ever risk that leaving the depot on off the chance it gets T-boned in an accident. This is classic mythos progression stuff, where the slightly extraordinary gets told and retold with each version seeming more implausible, turning ordinary events into mythic tales of heroes larger than life battling the gods... Except in this case its progressively more complicated and implausible sounding technology transforming into genuinely impossible for them to pay for it with their budget, transforming into a lie, into a myth, into a complete fabrication and conspiracy.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  It shouldn't. Fan death is very impossible, while connecting to open wifi is just "they probably don't bother".
somat 4y ago
I run a public wifi node and can confirm that the only traffic it has seen lately is the neighbors samsung tv phoning home.