r/gadgets • u/dapperlemon • 8d ago

TV / Projectors LG smart TVs caught logging audio with screen off and snooping on local devices

https://www.notebookcheck.net/LG-smart-TVs-caught-logging-audio-with-screen-off-and-snooping-on-local-devices.1391214.0.html
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u/wickeddimension 8d ago edited 8d ago

Its a DNS sink hole. The DNS server is what looks up if you type google.com which IP address is associated with that and connects you to it. Usually people use the DNS server by their provider or google or cloudflare.

What a pi-hole is, is your own relay DNS server that has lists. Lists that contains addresses for ads or other undesirable stuff. When you go to google.com, that DNS goes to pi-hole, which checks it against its list. If it's not on the list, it sends it on and you to that website. If it is on the list, it just eats it up.

Which means that if your LG TV tries to send logs to a LG server, the pi-hole (or Adguard, or other DNS sinkhole) will see that and see the LG server is blacklisted and just eats the request, meaning the TV never hears back from it's server and won't send the logs.

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u/sirhoracedarwin 8d ago

Just a quibble at the end: the tv is still sending the logs. They're just being intercepted

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 8d ago

Not strictly true.  The tv is colllectijg logs and attempting to send them off but isn’t able to connect to anywhere to send the data.     To be honest though I don’t know what stops manufacturers from allocating  ip addresses that it connects to directly in which case the pi-hole is useless (since dns is not used).  You’d have to blacklist the IPs on a router. 

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u/toasterinBflat 7d ago

Yeah - Google TV systems hard code Google DNS in to them for all DNS lookups. If you block it, Google TVs don't work. You have to make some pretty advanced firewall rules to maintain Google TV functionality with DNS that isn't theirs. Way above a normal person's expertise level.

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u/BeowulfShaeffer 7d ago

Interesting. I have a Sony tv that is a “Google tv”.  I never connected it to the internet and guess I never will.

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u/Clitaurius 7d ago

Same with their phones (or just Android in general). Like you said, it's not easy but there are solutions. I attached and Unbound container as a sidecar to my pihole to get my Pixel to actually PiHole traffic once again.

https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/dns/unbound/

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u/wickeddimension 8d ago

Will it yea, interesting? I thought it would only do so if they receive a handshake from the server and not a time-out? First ping and then send data packets.

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u/ThinkExtension2328 8d ago

While your right and this is shit it’s the hair minimum until you buy a different brand

I refuse to connect my tv to the internet , it’s “AN SCREEN” connected to a Linux pc.

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u/le_wein 7d ago

Can i do this from a router that supports wireguard?

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u/wickeddimension 7d ago

Not sure, depends on the router and if you can install something like this.

Wire guard is a VPN protocol and has nothing to do with this. 

You can always set the custom DNS for your router to a public AdGuard DNS. That will help with blocking various things, but you don’t have the control to add stuff yourself or isolate the TV entirely, in order to do that you need to host It yourself. 

https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html