16 ms·
LG washing machine sending 3.7GB of data a day
- varispeed 3y agoThis should be illegal unless the data format is open, documented and user can turn it off or set their own endpoint or their preferred repairer.
- bradleybuda 3y agoOr you could just not buy one
- monospaced 3y ago> In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool.” Other LG smart washing machine users showed device data use from their apps. It turns out that these appliances more typically use less than 1MB per day.
- monkburger 3y agoAh! I should have read a little further. I apologize!
- cratermoon 3y agoA megabyte a day still seems excessive.
- dgrin91 3y agoIf you agree to some form of anonymous tracking for diagnostics I can see 1mb being reasonable. This would be periodic update on things like usage levels, part quality, etc. Most likely that tracking acceptance is buried in some 500 page eula, but thats a separate issue.
- solardev 3y agoWhy do you need an entire megabyte for that? Even if you did laundry five times a day, it shouldn't take more than a few bytes to store a few metrics. Even if you're lazy and uploaded an uncompressed JSON array of objects, that shouldn't be more than a few kB. Way less if you compress it. A megabyte is a LOT of data.
- crazygringo 3y agoI could easily see it measuring the forces and weight on the drum every 5 seconds (or even every 10 ms) during the whole wash, to be able to produce charts of vibration patterns, that engineers could use to correlate with failure. Remember -- when you're spinning at high speed to wring out the water, it's actually some pretty crazy strong forces. Or other things measured every ~second, like stuff related to the motor, temperatues, humidity, etc. and other diagnostics. Seems really easy to generate a megabyte if you consider time series. Even easier if it's in XML or JSON rather than a CSV.
- solardev 3y agoYou really think they're going to measure all that, upload it, send it to some expensive engineer, have them try to physically model the error, and then... what? That might make sense during development, but there's no way they do that in a consumer product. If a part breaks they're just going to send out a replacement or the repair guy is gonna get some third party part. Recording that much detail would just be noise. Even if they had specific parts sensors (doubt it, for costs), they could just process that locally and send up an error code, not the whole log. I find that all pretty hard to believe, but if anyone has evidence to the contrary, I'd be glad to be proven wrong. I had a LG washing machine bought new a few years ago promising all sorts of bells and whistles and app integrations. But it was super janky and cheaply made, the app integration was terrible, the on board memory would lose its configured settings, the entire LCD broke after a few weeks... it was not what I would consider well-engineered at all. If it was sending a megabyte a day I'd just assume it was yet another bug, not some forward thinking QA.
- ParetoOptimal 3y agoOther users having low data usage doesn't prove they also have low usage? Are people so uncomfortable saying "we don't know" that they use such loose reasoning to "get the answer"? I'll re-read the article/tweets, maybe I missed something.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Aurornis 3y ago> Other users having low data usage doesn't prove they also have low usage? The follow-up Tweet is from the same person who reported the initial issue. This happens a lot: Devices get a new IP address but some tool has an internal database that remembers the old device at that address. It then shows stats for the new device at that IP address but reports it as coming from whatever it was initially recognized as.
- Kranar 3y agoWhy are you ignoring that the person who made the original claim about 3.7 GB of data per day stated that it could be an accuracy issue with his router?
- yakz 3y agoMy Ubiquiti UniFi UDM is not good at device identification. It's kind of annoying because I have this big list of devices on the network and it's peppered with devices that I know don't exist. I'd appreciate it if it said something like "Maybe iPad Air", instead of just "iPad Pro 2nd Gen" when I know no such device is on my network.
- stock_toaster 3y agoios devices (unsure about android) use random MACs on wireless networks by default. https://support.apple.com/en-us/102509 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102509
- vsgherzi 3y agoRandom aside for this, I believe this functionality existed for many years but actually hasn’t worked until recently. (Take this with a grain of salt)
- fifilura 3y agoI had to turn random MAC off, my google mesh could not handle it. Wifi on my samsung phone would only work for a couple of minutes.
- justusthane 3y agoThe random MAC would still be within the vendor prefix though, and a MAC address won’t identity a specific device type anyway. Edit: I’m wrong
- epcoa 3y agoNo it isn’t, vendor prefixes are sort of an anachronism. Bit 41 - bit 1 of the first octet is reserved for local (random) use. That and the group bit (40) set to 0 means the second digit of the human readable MAC is 2, 6, A or E, but that’s it.
- 3y ago
- Johnie 3y agoNote: that was inaccurately reported in the TomsHardware article The fact that it shows up as using iMessage is the part that I said may be inaccurately reported. Even now, I am still seeing some suspicious data usage. I’ve started wiresharking it yesterday to track it down.
- boringuser2 3y agoA couple of notes: 1. If you must have an IoT device, favor zigbee. 2. Put your IoT devices on a segmented network that you've throttled. IoT devices neither need nor deserve privileged network access. 3. Probably don't use a consumer grade router if you know how to monitor network traffic. 4. That all being said, it feels unlikely that an IoT device would be exposed on a properly configured router to anything beyond vendor spyware.
- globular-toast 3y agoIt shouldn't even need internet access. IoT is a stupid name. It's just networking.
- boringuser2 3y agoUhhh, alright. Anyhow, many devices require network access for useful functionality. That network is ideally zigbee. (It's also possible for Bluetooth to make up for some of the lost featureset for non-realtime applications, so I'd favor Bluetooth smart devices over wifi smart devices.)
- globular-toast 3y agoYes, Zigbee is the way to go. But the point is there shouldn't be any internet involved. Using the internet protocol on wifi is the stupidest way to do this kind of stuff and leads to dumb crap like your washing machine phoning home.
- boringuser2 3y agoI mean, it's obviously a pretty good product in terms of effortlessly providing networking to a device in a way that an average home user can manage. Everyone has wifi. That being said, a better architected device would probably just use Bluetooth and your smartphone as a controller. I don't think many average home users could tell the difference.
- hamandcheese 3y agoI'm not opposed to smart homes, I love being able to turn my lights on and off from across the room. But I don't know if I understand the use case for a networked washing machine.
- t-writescode 3y agoProgress tracking, diagnostics, temperature tracking, load unevenness alerting, remote disable if broken, etc.
- Analemma_ 3y agoI could imagine a situation like, "I will be out all day and only return in the late evening - if I start the wash cycle when leaving, it will sit wet in the machine all day. But if I start it when I return, I will have to stay awake to put it in the dryer. I'd like to start it on a timer so the wash cycle finishes just as I return." But that's both pretty contrived and most non-smart washing machines can do that with a timer anyway.
- nomel 3y agoI get significantly cheaper electricity at night ($0.12 vs > $0.50/kwh, stupid California). Being able to schedule saves money, not that WiFi is necessarily required.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoDid you check how much power your washer uses? Mine uses 0.4 kwh so you'd be saving 15.2 cents per load. Not really worth the hassle IMO.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoThe dryer is more interesting
- nomel 3y agoYou've neglected to include the energy used to heat the water.
- mmastrac 3y agoI created a wifi network for most of the smart appliances at home. It's nice that Unifi hardware lets you choose some of the higher-level wifi protocol options per-network, so I have a modern roaming-enabled 802.11 5GHz network for most devices, and the legacy 2.4GHz one for the fridge and stove to make use of.
- jbverschoor 3y agoNew: data-efficient washing machine. Only 90Gb per load!! Buy now!
- seanalltogether 3y agoIf these devices are designed to upload "automatic diagnostic reports" to a central tracker, it's possible this machine is stuck in a failure state that is generating massive amounts of error logs.
- jacquesm 3y agoDoes it matter? It shouldn't be hogging bandwidth like this, that's a failure by itself regardless of whether there another failure state at play. Also, I'd have to question any washing machine that can generate 'massive amounts of error logs'. 3.7 G / Day is an insane amount of data.
- arcanemachiner 3y agoSoftware can have errors.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 3y agoWhat an enlightening comment, thank you.
- kragen 3y agoa program running on a 480 megahertz microcontroller can quite reasonably crash a million times a second; even a single 80-character error log line would be 80 megabytes per second or 7 terabytes per day. and it would be reasonable to record more telemetry from a crash than a single line
- paledot 3y agoHow far we have come. Back in my day, a program could only crash a few thousand times a second.
- 3y ago
- amelius 3y agoWell it's still better than a Chinese robotic vacuum cleaner with a bunch of cameras doing it.
- dotancohen 3y agoiRobot, the robotic vacuum cleaner company that leaked photos of people on the toilet as viewed from the vacuum cleaners' cameras, is an American company. If I'm not mistaken they grew out of MIT.
- quitit 3y agoThat's rather cherry-picked. The information you left out: 1. Those were test units, not purchased devices used by customers. 2. For consumer Roomba devices that include a camera: photographic data is not sent to iRobot for processing. 3. The test data for the images you mentioned was leaked by a 3rd party based in Venezuela. 4. These test devices were operated by employees and volunteers in exchange for rewards. They were aware that their image was being taken. 5. The devices also contained additional monitoring hardware attached to the device which is not present in the consumer models. If anything this fiasco demonstrated: (i) one of the weaknesses of outsourcing, (ii) individuals taking part in testing should be mindful of their privacy, (iii) test units should have user-purgeable test data (if this was not already included) (iv) the importance of reading beyond a headline Refs: (1) https://www.businessinsider.com/roomba-photos-recorded-bathroom-leaked-from-test-units-irobot-says-2022-12?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/roomba-photos-recorded-bathr... (2) https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/31056 https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/31056 (3) https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964 https://homesupport.irobot.com/s/article/964
- dotancohen 3y agoI read a headline, chose a position, and remember only the grossest of one-sided arguments with no chance for the other side to respond. Am I not now entitled to hold a strong opinion and try to influence others in the matter?
- 3y ago
- H8crilA 3y agoWhy hasn't anyone mentioned a botnet yet? Those devices are perfect targets for Mirai clones. (yes, you still cannot run a mailserver at home, currently because we live in the age of Internet of Shit).
- WhyNotHugo 3y agoThis was the first thing that came to mind. Imagine a fleet of laundry machines each sending 3.7GB of data. That's the perfect way to run a DDOS, and nobody will ever notice.
- account-5 3y agoFor some reason the scene in the mall from The Mitchell's Vs the machines popped into my head: > delicates, fluff n fold, carnage!
- causal 3y agoUsing a washing machine to launder data
- deadbunny 3y agoHopefully they were using a socks proxy.
- porridgeraisin 3y agoYou win
- cyclotron3k 3y agoMost people in the reddit thread I saw seemed to assume botnet. I'm not convinced though. That would assume that the washing machine was opening an external port on the user's router, which seems unlikely. I looked up a manual for one of the the washers which has the "ThinQ" feature and there's no mention of UPnP.
- redbell 3y ago> An LG washing machine owner and self-confessed fintech geek has asked the Twitterverse why his smart home appliance ate an average of 3.66GB of data daily. What about non-techies?! How would they notice and react to such data harvesting behaviors in their homes' appliances, computers, phones, gadgets? I believe there must be a bare minimum of self-awareness to deal with the ever-evolving digital world we live in.
- userbinator 3y agoAwareness is the last thing the companies who create these things want users to have.
- codeulike 3y ago3.7GB seems like a lot, but modern appliances are highly efficient, a lot of those bits just circulate between the laundry and the router to cool down between wash cycles ... people just don't understand how much data they use when hand washing clothes, sloshing gigabytes down the drain... (after https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1744807035454079079 https://twitter.com/meekaale/status/1744807035454079079 )
- aembleton 3y agoIt's probably just retrying constantly because it is being blocked by the pihole. It's probably just trying to send a few kb.
- ectospheno 3y agoI have found many IoT devices don’t play nice when given nxdomain. Often they will respect high TTLs though. Giving them an address with a high TTL that returns an error often silences them nicely.
- Avamander 3y agoIt's most likely just a SOCKS proxy. (Credit to SwiftOnSecurity)
- aidenn0 3y agoIs anyone else surprised at the ~70GB per day usage (assuming 3.7GB is 5% of total usage)? That would exceed the 1.28TB data cap on my ISP.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe] More discussion here with even the person who reported it posting: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38930507
- jakderrida 3y agoStupid laundry machine spends all day on reddit downvoting my jokes and memes.
- tkems 3y agoWhile I get the appeal of having networked devices that you can access from anywhere, I want local control for everything. Sure, a cloud option on top is nice, but local first! I feel that the current solution to "control from anywhere" is the laziest and most privacy invasive. Also, when XYZ company shuts down there service in 2 years and abandons your product, you might not even be able to use it anymore. What a waste.
- dist-epoch 3y agoThe software was replaced by an AI, and it's watching YouTube videos on how to do it's job.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoIf I recall correctly, his washer was mining Bitcoin.
- userbinator 3y agoAssuming I'd be stupid enough to have a "smart" washing machine, in this case I would've immediately started capturing packets to determine what's going on. Apparently it was a misreporting(!) in the router's firmware, but the opaqueness of modern technology (and the ignorance it tends to perpetuate) can be very infuriating. Meanwhile my washing machine has zero electronics and is completely predictable and obvious in operation.
- account-5 3y agoZero electronics? What are you using? A washboard and a mangle?
- userbinator 3y agoMid-century Whirlpool top-loader. Electric but not electronic.
- tzs 3y agoFor those who do not want WiFi on their appliances you still can get highly rated reasonably priced washing machines without WiFi, even from the companies that are putting WiFi in nearly everything. E.g., I recently bought an LG WM3400CW washing machine for $650. On Consumer Reports it is tied for 3rd on the front loader ratings list. The LG 3900 and 4000 are tied for #1 with overall scores of 87, then the 3400, 8900, and 3600 tied for #3 with overall scores of 85. Nearly every LG has WiFi nowadays, but not the 3400. Consumer Reports says it does but I think they probably got confused because it has LG's "Smart Diagnosis" which lets you get diagnostic information via LG's mobile app. On models with WiFi Smart Diagnosis does indeed use WiFi. On models without WiFi it uses sound. The washing machine plays sounds that sound similar to the sounds that acoustic modems made back in the pre-broadband internet days. Their mobile app listens to those and extracts the diagnostics data.
- notpachet 3y ago> On models without WiFi it uses sound. The washing machine plays sounds that sound similar to the sounds that acoustic modems made back in the pre-broadband internet days. Their mobile app listens to those and extracts the diagnostics data. That's actually pretty cool! I think we should use this for more stuff to help usher in the R2-D2 future.
- f1refly 3y agoThere was a company called chirp who offered an sdk for this, they also had fun proof of concept apps where you could share arbitrary data to people around you via sound. They eventually got bought by sonos and their offerings vanished...
- flexagoon 3y agoI don't know how other smart speakers (eg. Google Home/Alexa) do this, but the Yandex Station smart speaker uses this for initial wifi setup. You enter the Wifi password on your phone in their app, then your phone plays a series of sounds in which the SSID and the password are encoded, the speaker listens to that and connects to the network.
- 3y ago
- simonblack 3y agoIt's the Russians. They've run out of their own washing-machine chips to re-use in their missiles, so they've found a way to hack into washing-machines all over the world and use those millions of chips to guide their missiles instead.
- Solstinox 3y agoIt would be a sad day for ballistics if you needed 3.7 GBs of data per day to guide a missile.
- chillingeffect 3y agoTitle clickbait. Please remove article.
- tonymet 3y agoI had a similar scare with an Amazon smart plug. Later the heavy user was another device. Turns out AsusWRT / asusMerlin has a pretty severe accounting bug . My router was running the same software as this author
- briHass 3y agoIf I'm being charitable, I assume most of these IoT devices that could just use local-only networking for basic functionality do it through a central (Internet) server for 'security'. If the device just opened a simple TCP/HTTP server on your network for phone app access, there would be dozens of breathless articles from the typical low-quality technology sites claiming that your washing machine can easily be monitored by hackers. By hitting a specific LG domain and verifying/pinning certs, the vendor can ostensibly secure that central API and easily make updates if issues are found. It sure seems like it would be much cheaper to have the device simply connect to Wifi and be able to respond to simple TCP packets (TP-LINK smart switches do this) rather than build all this centralized infrastructure that costs money in perpetuity.
- 293984j29384 3y agoI have a LG washing machine and LG dryer that are wifi connected. I keep 90 days of netflow data. Both have used about 10mb total over the last 90 days, 100% on port 8883 tcp back to AWS EC2 owned IP addresses. Typically less than 100kb/day with a high of 2mb/day and a low of 12kb/day. Looking at the calendar, this corresponds to days we ran loads vs idle no use days. I'm okay with this level of data usage.
- frabjoused 3y agoTrash SEO article. You have to sleuth through a page of info and ads to glean a paragraph of inconclusive content. Looking at you, Google.
- xyst 3y agoYet another reminder I need to segment off my network. Have a VLAN with just IoT junk and severely restrict access to the local network and internet.
- efitz 3y agoI have both an LG washer and dryer, about 2 years old I’m unable to connect the dryer to WiFi at all (UniFi). The washer does nothing useful on WiFi. All I want is them to connect to HomeAssistant or HomeKit and send a notification when they finish their cycle. I am super disappointed in LG.
- btzs 3y agoI would suggest using a tasmota smart plug and check energy consumption to determine if program has finished.
- EspadaV9 3y agoLike another user mentioned, I'd recommend getting a smart plug. I use the TP Link Tapo plugs with the energy monitoring. There was a post on Ozbargain that had a better automation than what I was previously using and works really well. https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/14789545/redir https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/14789545/redir
- xrd 3y agoIf I'm hand washing the stuff, I'm probably posting 6 gb an hour on Instagram so this seems about right to me.
- shmerl 3y agoWell, why guess. Check the outgoing destination of the traffic on the router.
- tunesmith 3y agoLG washing machines are the bane of my existence today because we have a power outage that will last for quite a while, clothes inside the washer, in water, and a locked lid. So far I haven't any way to open the damn thing without taking a hammer to it.
- EasyMark 3y agoooof this is why I bought a generator after the last big outage. Well not unlucky enough to have clothes stuck in a washer but it was still damn cold for 2 days.
- winrid 3y agoHaving a little UPS handy might be useful if you have power outages. You could just plug the machine into it to unlock it. Ridiculous, but an idea.
- tunesmith 3y agoDefinitely trying this. Brought our UPS to the hotel to charge it up.
- tunesmith 3y agoUpdate: it worked! We were able to save our sopping filthy clothes. ;-)
- winrid 3y agoNice :)
- winrid 3y agoBy the way, you can also get a little 1000-2000 watt inverter on Amazon for less than $200. It can run off your car battery. Great for emergencies, cheaper than a generator for short term usage. I've used mine to run a stick welder and air compressor in the middle of nowhere.
- 3y ago
- EasyMark 3y agoMy rule for these types of appliances is hook up long enough to get any firmware updates and then unplug and wait and see if the machine functions normally, then it is likely to never see my network again. I suppose they could still use 4g but I doubt most companies will do that.
- d0lphin 3y agoThe way I see it, it's a washing machine. It shouldn't need firmware updates.
- scrps 3y agoWhen cryptocurrency tumbling gets literal... Edit to add: I also just realized I have an LG that does have wifi that I've never used, which may now get used for entirely different reasons... I buy asus having a math bug or something, it is also possible those are constant retries on something failing. I put a pihole on my parents home network and in a month their roku had some stupid amount of blocked attempts, in the tens of thousands.
- qwertox 3y agoFor those who want to IoT-ify their washing machine, I've had great success with a power meter like a TP-Link HS110. It's connected to a power strip with a switch so that it can be turned off when not in use (which BTW would also be a solution for the owner of the LG machine). Due to the ability to read it out with Python it sends me an Email when the washing is done and I can also track the power consumption in Grafana. It also shows a "finished X minutes ago" message on some HA-like always-on tablet dashboard.
- jpc0 3y agoPSA: If you buy any hardware that requires an internet connection to work return it as faulty. Is this washer going to get software updates for it's entirely lifespan? "It's behind NAT and a firewall". Well if one of your other devices get infected and it gets infected now what? "But NAT" you heard of STUN servers? It doesn't need to be in a botnet to be malicious... That's assuming your ISP router from 10 years ago without any updates isn't also vulnerable. "But I keep an eye on my stuff" what about the 5billion other users in the world? IOT is insecure garbage you shouldn't be putting in your house and you shouldn't let your family do so either.
- flexagoon 3y agoWhat if I'm using a Unifi UDM router and all of my IoT devices are on a separate VLAN and the firewall prevents them from initializing connections to any other devices on the local network?
- jpc0 3y ago> "But I keep an eye on my stuff" what about the 5billion other users in the world? And I concider thr UDM to be IOT in and of itself but that is arguably an opinion not objectively true
- flexagoon 3y ago> what about the 5billion other users in the world? Okay? I'm not sure how it affects me. Perhaps the people who don't "keep an eye on their stuff" are the ones who shouldn't get IoT devices, it's weird to say that nobody should get them
- jpc0 3y agoYou are reinforcing a market driven by incorrect principles, it's got nothing to do with you. You are voting with your money and you are voting for something that shouldn't exist in the way it exists. Easiest way to be a revolutionary is to not do something in this case. The market will self correct if you show them it's wrong. At this point you, an informed technical user, are doing a disservice to the uninformed public by continuing to support products that are arguably evil by design.
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoThe router was misreporting network activity. The machine wasn't sending 3.7GB a day. It says so in the article.
- Johnie 3y agoThat is incorrectly reported.
- say_it_as_it_is 3y agoNo, it's not. > In a follow-up post a day after his initial Tweet, Johnie noted “inaccuracy in the ASUS router tool,”
- samstave 3y agoI have an LG washer and dryer with wifi capability. WHY THE FUCK DO I WANT THEM CONNECTED TO MY NETWORK
- punkbit 3y agoYup, doesn't make any sense at all.
- mrkramer 3y agoThat's why we have bufferbloat.
- ladyanita22 3y agoWhich OS are these machines running? Are we still doing RTOSes here or have we moved to a full Yocto linux image?
- azubinski 3y agoI just wonder which of LG's competitors ordered this nonsense.
- xory 3y agoAccording to UniFi, my LG washer and dryer have each used 15.9MB in the last month. LG Dishwasher used 3.8MB. I keep all IOT devices like these on client-isolated WiFi on their own VLAN with a speed limit of 250Kbps. They don’t have access to all the bandwidth they can eat, so they can’t participate meaningfully in a DDOS attack when compromised. 250Kbps is enough for “laundry is done” and “grill is pre-heated” push notifications to squeak through.
- Log_out_ 3y agoIt's all Mime fellatio video?