4 ms·

Pretty sure Mac randomization is part of the ipv6 spec, and our Apple products have been doing it for years now. The tv can do whatever the heck it wants becaus

Pretty sure Mac randomization is part of the ipv6 spec, and our Apple products have been doing it for years now. The tv can do whatever the heck it wants because if it’s not this thing malfunctioning it’ll be your toaster. Anything concerning networking needs to handle bs like this and not fall on its face. My question would be why are windows installs tracking every device on the network? Sure file server discovery, etc, but why’s it storing them long term, esp if it is overloaded with them, why would it not be setup to do LRU or otherwise purge records. Seems silly to store entries until you have a critical failure.

V__ 3y ago
Probably to allow screen sharing or casting.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  It’s 2024 if you’re opening ports on your firewall/edge router still, you’re doing it wrong, both as a user and as an app developer.
  - brnt 3y ago
    Yes, but, embedded software...
comprev 3y ago
The randomisation feature of iOS was apparently not working for a long time despite Apple marketing otherwise [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/iphone-privacy-feature-hiding-wi-fi-macs-has-failed-to-work-for-3-years/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/iphone-privacy-feat...
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  Use any mac you want I'm sure we’re being fingerprinted other ways so it doesn’t matter. Security through obscurity isn’t security, after all.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    MAC randomization prevents the local network from trivially tracking you based on access point logs. Of course, if your device runs software that broadcasts some unique identifier, the network may deploy some collector service to query/capture these but that's already extra effort. On iOS I don't believe apps can run a persistent network server in the background, so background tracking would actually be quite tricky even if you had a cooperating app. Fingerprinting is absolutely an issue for device-based trackers (whether apps or websites), but from the perspective of a passive network observer they're usually quite airtight and don't leak the collected data over insecure channels.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      Not just access point logs, this isn’t WiFi specific. It’s to make packet inspection harder to link to a device. But, if I run say an airport network and control dns for dhcp I can track your dns requests (non encrypted dns) and interface info across MAC addresses and maybe even tag packets somehow. Also, if every device that connects is routed through a dedicated vlan only containing that device, it can randomize itself all it wants, it’s on a network by itself so it can’t “hide in the crowd”. Those are just things off the top of my head and am not a network person. I’m sure it’s not preventing the motivated from tracking you if they want to.
      - Nextgrid 3y ago
        I don't disagree that a motivated attacker can set up advanced infrastructure to collect network-related fingerprints, but this requires active effort. MAC address randomization is designed to at least prevent multiple unconnected networks from trivially tracking a user by making up a per-SSID MAC address. Ideally, Apple would randomize MACs within the same SSID too, but this would break a lot of "free wifi for X time, then pay up" schemes that rely on consistent MAC addresses, and despite the appearances Apple is still very much in bed with the establishment and doesn't want to rock the boat too much by giving that much control to the users.
  - Yeul 3y ago
- joshstrange 3y ago
  > despite Apple marketing otherwise That's a very uncharitable way to phrase that. It's not like Apple was lying or doing this on purpose. It was clearly a bug, a bug that was not wide known for 3+ years. It's not as if it was some open secret that everyone was taking advantage of. I'm not saying no one knew or that no one took advantage of it but I'd imagine the average consumer was complete unaffected by this bug.
  - skygazer 3y ago
    I agree with you that it was probably unintentional, and an embarrassing failure, though not malicious. I mostly like Apple products and am tolerant of their business model and practices. But I was struck by your phrasing to wonder whether we really owe charitable interpretations to companies. I do think most people employed anywhere are probably well intentioned, and maybe we owe them something. But companies are almost algorithms that run on a substrate of people.
hnlmorg 3y ago
We aren’t talking about MAC randomisation (which itself would cause issues if it happened every few minutes) but UUID randomisation in UPnP. It’s a completely different protocol that sits in a completely different layer on OSI to the data link layer (where MAC addresses live). UPnP is literally just a protocol that sits on top of HTTP.
- wutwutwat 3y ago
  I glossed over it being upnp. Ok, but the questions till remains why is windows tracking things to the point of deadlocks surely the folks at MS are aware that rouge misconfigured or malicious devices can exist on a computer network (they wrote the OS used by a majority of them after all), especially one which is doing upnp, the firewall hole poking protocol.
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    Caching is a pretty reasonable thing for software to do. Windows could have done a better job with cache invalidation (if it’s even doing any at all) but retaining a cache of available devices via UPnP is a perfectly reasonable expectation. For one thing, it massively speeds up device discovery. However having a device randomise their UUID isn’t a reasonable expectation. This why I said in a different comment that both Windows and Hisense are at fault. Windows could have handled this kind of edge case much better but that doesn’t absolve Hisense TVs responsibility for behaving badly too.
    - wutwutwat 3y ago
      Right I wasn’t saying don’t cache network topology, IO is slow, cache it. That’s why I wondered why they didn’t have LRU or some other eviction policy to deal with a full cache, stale entries, etc.
      - hnlmorg 3y ago
        I’m not defending Microsoft here, but in fairness, we are talking about 1000s of entries when normal use might only see a few dozen over several years of Windows usage even under extreme circumstances. So I can see why cache invalidation probably wasn’t at the forefront of their mind. However, as this incident demonstrates, there’s always an edge case that breaks things.

V__ 3y ago

Probably to allow screen sharing or casting.

wutwutwat 3y ago
It’s 2024 if you’re opening ports on your firewall/edge router still, you’re doing it wrong, both as a user and as an app developer.
- brnt 3y ago
  Yes, but, embedded software...

comprev 3y ago

The randomisation feature of iOS was apparently not working for a long time despite Apple marketing otherwise [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/iphone-privacy-feature-hiding-wi-fi-macs-has-failed-to-work-for-3-years/ https://arstechnica.com/security/2023/10/iphone-privacy-feat...

wutwutwat 3y ago
Use any mac you want I'm sure we’re being fingerprinted other ways so it doesn’t matter. Security through obscurity isn’t security, after all.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  MAC randomization prevents the local network from trivially tracking you based on access point logs. Of course, if your device runs software that broadcasts some unique identifier, the network may deploy some collector service to query/capture these but that's already extra effort. On iOS I don't believe apps can run a persistent network server in the background, so background tracking would actually be quite tricky even if you had a cooperating app. Fingerprinting is absolutely an issue for device-based trackers (whether apps or websites), but from the perspective of a passive network observer they're usually quite airtight and don't leak the collected data over insecure channels.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    Not just access point logs, this isn’t WiFi specific. It’s to make packet inspection harder to link to a device. But, if I run say an airport network and control dns for dhcp I can track your dns requests (non encrypted dns) and interface info across MAC addresses and maybe even tag packets somehow. Also, if every device that connects is routed through a dedicated vlan only containing that device, it can randomize itself all it wants, it’s on a network by itself so it can’t “hide in the crowd”. Those are just things off the top of my head and am not a network person. I’m sure it’s not preventing the motivated from tracking you if they want to.
    - Nextgrid 3y ago
      I don't disagree that a motivated attacker can set up advanced infrastructure to collect network-related fingerprints, but this requires active effort. MAC address randomization is designed to at least prevent multiple unconnected networks from trivially tracking a user by making up a per-SSID MAC address. Ideally, Apple would randomize MACs within the same SSID too, but this would break a lot of "free wifi for X time, then pay up" schemes that rely on consistent MAC addresses, and despite the appearances Apple is still very much in bed with the establishment and doesn't want to rock the boat too much by giving that much control to the users.
- Yeul 3y ago
joshstrange 3y ago
> despite Apple marketing otherwise That's a very uncharitable way to phrase that. It's not like Apple was lying or doing this on purpose. It was clearly a bug, a bug that was not wide known for 3+ years. It's not as if it was some open secret that everyone was taking advantage of. I'm not saying no one knew or that no one took advantage of it but I'd imagine the average consumer was complete unaffected by this bug.
- skygazer 3y ago
  I agree with you that it was probably unintentional, and an embarrassing failure, though not malicious. I mostly like Apple products and am tolerant of their business model and practices. But I was struck by your phrasing to wonder whether we really owe charitable interpretations to companies. I do think most people employed anywhere are probably well intentioned, and maybe we owe them something. But companies are almost algorithms that run on a substrate of people.

hnlmorg 3y ago

We aren’t talking about MAC randomisation (which itself would cause issues if it happened every few minutes) but UUID randomisation in UPnP. It’s a completely different protocol that sits in a completely different layer on OSI to the data link layer (where MAC addresses live). UPnP is literally just a protocol that sits on top of HTTP.

wutwutwat 3y ago
I glossed over it being upnp. Ok, but the questions till remains why is windows tracking things to the point of deadlocks surely the folks at MS are aware that rouge misconfigured or malicious devices can exist on a computer network (they wrote the OS used by a majority of them after all), especially one which is doing upnp, the firewall hole poking protocol.
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  Caching is a pretty reasonable thing for software to do. Windows could have done a better job with cache invalidation (if it’s even doing any at all) but retaining a cache of available devices via UPnP is a perfectly reasonable expectation. For one thing, it massively speeds up device discovery. However having a device randomise their UUID isn’t a reasonable expectation. This why I said in a different comment that both Windows and Hisense are at fault. Windows could have handled this kind of edge case much better but that doesn’t absolve Hisense TVs responsibility for behaving badly too.
  - wutwutwat 3y ago
    Right I wasn’t saying don’t cache network topology, IO is slow, cache it. That’s why I wondered why they didn’t have LRU or some other eviction policy to deal with a full cache, stale entries, etc.
    - hnlmorg 3y ago
      I’m not defending Microsoft here, but in fairness, we are talking about 1000s of entries when normal use might only see a few dozen over several years of Windows usage even under extreme circumstances. So I can see why cache invalidation probably wasn’t at the forefront of their mind. However, as this incident demonstrates, there’s always an edge case that breaks things.