Live slow. Die whenever.
Joined August 2014
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Sloth retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Sloth retweeted
While responding with an emergency patch to a sudden RCE announcement, you are alerted to a second and third RCE in unrelated platforms you have to patch too.
Sloth retweeted
Entra ID Protection finally added a detection around suspicious addition of credentials 🥳
We've been seeing attackers register passkeys a lot lately, no attestation for users who are eligible to use SMS/voice is only making it worse... :-/
learn.microsoft.com/en-us/en…
Sloth retweeted
Quest Diagnostics has been hacked. Patient data was exposed. They serve roughly half of U.S. hospitals and physicians. Investigation ongoing.
Sloth retweeted
Security called me at 6:12 AM today.
"Patch every PHP server immediately."
I asked what happened.
"Two critical vulnerabilities. Remote code execution. No authentication required."
Cool.
How many PHP servers do we have?
According to inventory: 12
According to reality:
Nobody knows.
We found one running WordPress.
Three running old internal tools.
One under someone's desk.
Two inside vendor appliances.
A forgotten employee directory from 2016.
And a server named:
PHP-OLD-DO-NOT-TOUCH
Naturally, that one runs payroll exports.
Then we found a PHP 5.6 box.
I asked who owned it.
The documentation said:
BRIAN.
Brian left in 2019.
We called Brian.
He said:
"Oh wow, that's still running?"
Excellent.
By 8 AM, leadership joined the incident call.
CEO:
"Can hackers actually get in?"
Security:
"Potentially yes."
CEO:
"Without a password?"
Security:
"Yes."
CEO:
"Then why do WE need passwords?"
Not the lesson.
Finance asked if we could wait until the weekend to patch because downtime affects revenue.
Security explained that the alternative was letting strangers execute code on our servers.
Finance asked for a cost comparison.
At 9:17, someone suggested temporarily taking the vulnerable websites offline.
Marketing refused.
"Our campaign is live."
So for the next hour, the company officially decided maintaining a landing page for 20% off webinar registration was more important than preventing remote server takeover.
We finally patched everything we could find.
Then our scanner discovered another PHP server.
Hostname:
TEMP-PHP-2014
Uptime:
4,512 days.
Nobody knows what it does.
Nobody owns it.
Nobody can shut it down.
But every time we block network access, the warehouse stops printing shipping labels.
Security has classified it as critical infrastructure.
It is running PHP 5.4.
The vulnerability has existed longer than half our employees.
The emergency patch took four hours.
Finding out what PHP actually runs took eleven.
The internet isn't held together with code.
It's held together with servers everyone is afraid to turn off.
Sloth retweeted
To teach a lesson,
After Wiz rushed to buy php2shell domain and use its marketing machine to steal the spotlight, I spotted "phpbleed" in a recent Calif tweet and bought phpbleed.com before wiz could pull the same stunt again.
A big budget can buy a domain. It shouldn't buy someone else's research credit.
If you have contacts at CISA or in the press, do the right thing: make sure the researchers who actually did the work get the recognition they deserve.
Hack the planet. Credit the researchers.
Sloth retweeted
🚨 PUBLIC ASSISTANCE REQUESTED
The NPS is asking for information about more than 20 individuals who may be missing or unaccounted for following the Aug. 29 flash flood in Bright Angel Canyon and the Phantom Ranch area.
If you know of hikers/backpackers who were in the Bright Angel Creek corridor Aug. 29—or had a campground reservation there—please contact NPS Investigative Services Branch:
📞 888-653-0009
📧 [email protected]
This includes those who may have been on the North Kaibab Trail between the trailhead and Phantom Ranch, at Bright Angel Campground, or in “the Box” north of Phantom Ranch.
nps.gov/grca/learn/news/publ…
ALT Muddy water of bright angel creek with muddy debris on the edge of the creek with a trail sign and the phantom ranch ranger station in the background
Sloth retweeted
Good morning @defcon
List drops at noon. Teams cannot be signed up until then. But come visit the booth and see what we've got!
Sloth retweeted
Instagram decided to roll out a new “Muse AI” feature, that lets users create AI images based on people’s Instagram photos.
Then they opted in EVERYONE with a public account
To opt out:
Click your profile picture
3 bars in the top right
scroll down to "Sharing and reuse"
Toggle off for both Posts and for Reels
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The provided screenshot shows content remixing settings, not the Muse AI opt-out. The AI opt-out is under "Sharing and reuse" at toggles labeled "Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta" for Posts and Reels. wired.com/story/meta-now… nytimes.com/2026/07/08/tec…
Sloth retweeted
***CRITICAL INCIDENT UPDATE***
@GardenGrovePD @OCSDStanton @OCHealth @CityGardenGrove @CityofStanton
