When TVs attack!

When TVs Attack!

Last week my trusty HTC 10 had it. Had to let it go. I had battled with it for a couple of weeks trying to figure out what the fuck HTC an/or Google had done to this once perfect phone. After I'd thrown every trick in the book outside of rooting at the thing, I was done. Fuck it. I just wanted something in my pocket that worked. Seeing as there's no perfect smartphone out there I'd resigned to trying a Google Pixel 2 XL (go big or go home, right?). Wanting to get the most out of that new phone of mine I decided to pick up a Daydream VR viewer. The experience was good but I wanted to share what I was seeing on our living room TV. So two days ago I took the plunge. This is where shit went wrong terribly quick. Not fully understanding how casting to my Samsung model UN55JU6500 TV worked, I thought that if I unplugged the Ethernet cable and put the TV on the same WiFi network as my phone then it would be able to cast to the TV. I set it all up and it didn't work. No harm done, right? Abso-fucking-lutely not! Not only was there something wrong, I had zero tools at my disposal to stop it. What happened you might wonder? Well after my failed cast to TV attempt, all of the Android devices in the house running Norton Mobile Security started throwing up this warning:

Yeah, not cool. Now I've been on the receiving end of malware false-positives before so I wasn't too freaked out yet. That changed when I logged into manage my Asus RT-AC66U. This was because it's language had changed from English to KOREAN! What. The. Fuck. I was still in denial. I thought I could beat this. Fuck it I thought, I'll reset it then swap the firmware and it'll all be good. It's gonna be OK, right? I mean, who can attack a router and own it forever more? Some Korean that was way smarter than me, that's who! Even after the reset and firmware swap the warning bells from Norton persisted. Fuck. Better sleep on it. It's not going anywhere. So I left it all unplugged and dismantled and went to work the next day.

I get to work and drop into Norton's support queue. Three hours later someone with the last name of "Mula" answered. Now, I've got no problem with someone trying to improve your station in life no matter where you live in the world. However, if your job is to listen and advise customers on network and/or computer security then you'd better be able to communicate properly. After clearly laying out the situation to Mr. Mula, he went on to tell me that the warning was due to an error in the server. I just needed to update the Android app to the latest version. Thing is, it already had that morning before heading off to work. What now Mr. Mula? So I gave him remote access to my phone via a Logmein session. One thing of note, he couldn't navigate himself on the Pixel 2 XL. I had to move to where he wanted to go. So I opened up Norton Mobile Security for him. His response? "I see that your app is in English. Has the problem been resolved?" ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!? What an asshole I thought, this guy can't be that dense. I forget exactly what I said but the gist of it was asking about how he would feel if he sat patiently waiting for three hours JUST TO GET A PERSON TO HELP HIM and then another half hour accomplishing nothing? I told Mr. Mula that I was done wasting my time with him and amateur hour and slammed that session shut as hard as my finger could hit the screen of my phone. I was PISSED! Not only did some Korean STILL own my router and TV, I still wasn't anywhere closer to a solution. I didn't have any tools to fix the problem. That's what bothered me the most. What to do....

At this point, the TV and now the router clearly sat at the center of my woes. Fuck that router but the TV? I paid a lot of money for that thing! I didn't want to just toss it out to the curb! So my solution was that if Samsung couldn't secure their "smart" TVs, they don't get to see my internet. Dickhead TVs! After a visit to my local MicroCenter I came home armed with a new router, Apple TV 4K for the zombie Samsung, Chromecast, and Roku Stick for the other non-zombie Samsung "smart" TV in the bedroom. With a new set of different SSIDs, passwords (for nearly every device), and logins Ultron was safely contained in my living room TV. No more warnings from Norton Mobile Security either. Thinking about it, had it not been for those warnings there's no telling what the attacker would've gotten away with. Bank accounts? All our pictures and videos of our family stored on the NAS ransomed? Pulsing the Hue lights in the bedroom at 2 am? There's so much attack surface and I'm at the mercy of the manufacturer to make sure it's able to be secured. Keep in mind that all security settings where enabled on the now zombie-fied Samsung "smart" TV. So it didn't matter what I did. The malware was already on there waiting to set sail. The only thing that saved my ass was those warnings from Norton. After I got everything set up again and back to normal I thought about how little attack surface a really well prepared attack really needs to be successful. That shit bothers me. It should bother you too if you're reading this. Because even if you follow the rules and do as you're told you can still get nailed like I did. Shout out to whoever writes code for Norton because you helped our family stay safe (no, I'm not sponsored by Norton in any way at this point). As for Samsung, WTF!? Secure your shit assholes! I can see a partnership between anti malware software vendors and smart TV manufacturers in the future as there's clearly a need for better security on their part. For now Ultron rages about inside of my TV. Trapped forever more. My only revenge against the malware that costed me a pretty penny worth of technology.