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This time, it's a malicious manufacturer, next time it's a malicious hacker. Doesn't seem like connecting these to the internet is worth it.
by bagels 2y ago
This time, it's a malicious manufacturer, next time it's a malicious hacker. Doesn't seem like connecting these to the internet is worth it.
- 4ntiq 2y agoI love the narrative of a Chinese manufacturer selling electronics to the West only to one day shut everything off for no reason at all than to fuck with people and disappear and for people to find out the supposedly registered company never existed. It's like a trashy, second-rate William Gibson knock off novel but there's something awfully amusing about it.
- lazide 2y agoFrankly it doesn’t even require (special) maliciousness (per-se) - spinning up random ‘brands’ to sell to rubes on Amazon while obfuscating beneficial owners is essentially standard operating procedure. The only surprising thing here is they took an action to brick something instead of just abandoning it.
- 4ntiq 2y ago>The only surprising thing here is they took an action to brick something instead of just abandoning it. You're right, but I wouldn't say surprising. I do wonder what would happen if the units just stopped working outright one day and they're all intended to be gridded and nothing works properly anymore and the distributors are stumped and can't get ahold of anyone.
- lazide 2y agoFair point - it would be trivial frankly to embed a ‘bug’ which causes them to all brick at some arbitrary point in the future too. Considering the level the firmware works at, probably even catch on fire.
- profsummergig 2y ago> and for people to find out the supposedly registered company never existed This already happened to me. Sort of. Saw an advt for Air Jordans for $7. With a pic of actual Air Jordans. Thought to myself, "it's only $7, let's see what happens". A very sorry looking pair of shoes arrived a couple weeks later. With "Air Jordan" printed on them. They weren't actual Air Jordans. There was no way, absolutely no way, to get in touch with the Chinese company that did this.
- 4ntiq 2y ago.. y-you wouldn't happen to still have them or are by any chance selling them would you? Strictly asking for a friend. (one year later: "Auction sells rare early Air Jordan prototype for $3 million")
- wmf 2y agoThis is why it's worth paying a few dollars more for certified superfakes instead of the regular fakes.
- t-3 2y agoProbably wrong to classify the manufacturer as malicious rather than the importer. Sounds like these units were brought to the US in violation of contractual agreements and thus were disabled when the manufacturer decided to enforce it.
- yuliyp 2y agoBut regardless, they're clearly not owned by Deye any longer. Causing damage to an unrelated party in retaliation for a contract dispute between two manufacturers is not OK.
- A1kmm 2y agoIt's likely they had no contractual agreement with the current owners of the inverters, and yet they have elected to wilfully damage the property of the current owners because they can. Wilfully damaging someone else's property without permission of the current owner seems pretty malicious, regardless of whether the importers (or maybe someone who supplied to the importer) were in breach of a contract.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lxgr 2y agoDeciding to enforce something like this after your product has already been sold/installed seems extremely dubious. Even just building in the capability (assuming this wasn't installed via a generic software update, in which case I'd have some follow-up questions on the security against malware of these things) shows significant malicious intent.
- bagels 2y agoManufacturer did something with intent to damage someone else's property. Seems to fit the definition to me.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]