Unauthorized Bread: Jailbreaking IoT toasters

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

by rbanffy • 6 years ago

212 122 6 years ago

throwanem11• 6 years ago

I'm a little disappointed that he didn't call it something like "Juicero World", given how on-the-nose he can rarely seem to help himself from being. But hey, he's the successful author, I have to assume he knows what he's doing.

jabroni_salad• 6 years ago

That would really date the story.

wizzwizz4• 6 years ago

Whereas writing it about this topic won't? (It probably won't, but we can fight to make it so.)

xg15• 6 years ago

I mean, "Boulangism" isn't that far from it, though I guess he could have called it "Breadero" instead...

aloisdg• 6 years ago

Is this... The Conquest of Bread

b4ke• 6 years ago

lol.... doubtful on the conquest of the universal baker.

jaybeeayyy• 6 years ago

“Ask for your appliance to work. If they don't get your appliance to work, ask for toasted bread. If they do not get your appliance to work or toast your bread, then take their toasted bread.”

Timpy3• 6 years ago

I programmed for a refurbishing company for some time, where I learned about toner cartridge refill kits. Once you've bought an expensive copier for your company you're vendor locked into proprietary toner cartridges, and they charge outrageous prices. "Pirates" started selling bags of toner and syringes on eBay with instructional videos on how to refill the cartridge yourself. The toner company started putting small chips on the cartridge that would count the number of prints, and deactivate the cartridge after a certain amount. "Out of toner" was a lie, it was unauthorized printing. Reading this story is making me sick to my stomach.

Scoundreller• 6 years ago

At least somebody figured out how to make pirate chips for most of them.

Dunno if that will always be the case for the future.

Timpy3• 6 years ago

Yeah, the pirate chips are curing the symptom and not the disease though. I think Smart TVs are a really concerning symptom. If 1984 were about tyrannical corporations and not tyrannical governments, telescreens would be spot-on for Smart TVs.

gspr• 6 years ago

It's high time for legislation banning this crap, or at the very least mandating an up-front warning à la "this product will stop functioning after n uses".

Nextgrid• 6 years ago

Fixing existing legislation like copyright law so that it can't be abused to protect this behavior would be enough; the market will do the rest and there's going to be a whole (legalized) industry specializing in cracking and unlocking (effectively repairing) defective by design products.

cwkoss• 6 years ago

Unfortunately it seems we can't fix it with legislation until we fix our democracy.

88% of democratic voters support Medicare For All, but the DNC just voted against including it as part of their platform.

The elected leaders in this country no longer serve their constituents, instead serving corporations.

I think the vast majority of people in technology understand the DMCA is a horrible law - but at least it doesn't kill people. But if we can't get politicians to recognize the immorality our our current state of "cancer will bankrupt your family, even if you're insured and it also kills you", I don't know what hope we have on fixing copyright.

WrtCdEvrydy5• 6 years ago

My favorite one was the K-Cup machine.

The first one allowed you use refillable K-cups so you could make coffee really fast using your own grounds.

The second one had a DRM module that didn't allow you to put in 'Unathorized Coffee'.

Regarding Unathorized Bread, I actually found the story of the cancer patients to be far more realistic and made me realize how people get radicalized easily. The story is something that should be read for yourself but I was on the edge of my seat through it.

Timpy3• 6 years ago

I edited the word "radicalized" out of my original comment to make it more concise, but that's exactly how I feel. I had medical issue while I was in a foreign country that cost me $35 to see a doctor and get medicine. When I returned to America, in between jobs and in between health care providers, the same medicine cost me $500, and that's only because I was able to have a doctor-friend phone in the prescription so I didn't have to pay for a doctor's visit too. This was the same winter I learned about toner-pirates, and I found my contact lens prescription were held from me unless I paid for another eye exam. I'm tired of protecting myself from this predatory system.

dghughes• 6 years ago

My favorite one was the K-Cup machine.

At work we had a KCup machine but when I brought in some K cups I bought they wouldn't work. It was a branded K cup but not for the newer machine. I figured out i could take the foil lid of an approved K cup and stick it on the unauthorized K cup.

The "template" foil was left by the machine on a paperclip for anyone to use.

sli• 6 years ago

Funny story about the K-cup thing, the DRM could be defeated with some tape. Shortly after that discovery, someone (wish I could remember their name) proceeded to manufacture little clip-on plastic parts and send them to people for free. They were real, injection-molded plastic parts, too. Not 3D printed ones, though you could 3D print one for yourself. I've still got one of the original ones somewhere around here.

There's no way the story wasn't posted on HN, but I don't think I'd be able to find it easily.

E: Turns out my search fu is better than I realized. It was called the Freedom Clip. Even Walmart sells them these days.

https://www.cnet.com/news/freedom-clip-busts-your-keurigs-dr...

rolph• 6 years ago

small pieces of nonconductive tape or other such coatings relieve many of these issues.

scalableUnicon• 6 years ago

Reminds me of my all-in-one "Ink Advantage" HP printer. The cost of ink cartridge had gone so high that it was reasonable to just not use it anymore. The cartridges can be reliably refilled 3-4 times but they put an artificial #X papers print limit on each of those cartridges and show cartridge needs to be replaced message once those limits are reached. Once there was a firmware update for some vulnerability, and the update somehow erased the previous cartridges used and I was able to refill and reuse all of my previous cartridges twice again so I know cartridges were in perfect condition despite the printer saying otherwise. It remains one of my most regretted purchases till date. Only if someone had the time and motive to jailbreak it :(

auxym2• 6 years ago

That angers me so much. In university I owned an Epson inkjet printer that refused one night to print out my paper in b&w because the cyan cartridge was empty.

Never bought an Epson cartridge after that, only counterfeits on eBay.

squarefoot• 6 years ago

Just to give some perspective on the outrageous prices asked for printer ink: https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2019/07/printer-ink-costs-...

_Microft• 6 years ago

To achieve true black, some printers also mix cyan, yellow and magenta in.

m4632• 6 years ago

I used to refill each cartridge in my (7?) color canon printer when it ran out.

Then I gave up and would order the el-cheapo amazon refills and change all 7 at once, empty or not.

(one big change every few months instead of random refills every week or so)

oh_sigh3• 6 years ago

You could probably format your text into some very dark gray color which doesn't use cyan.

userbinator2• 6 years ago

Epsons can(could?) be easily hacked:

https://sagittal.org/photo/CIS/inkchip/chip.html

...which is why there are lots of aftermarket CIS units for them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_ink_system

alex_duf3• 6 years ago

anyone aware of a printer that isn't robbing you?

I've seen this on buymeonce which is usually pretty good, but I'm having trouble believing epson would have actually designed this

https://buymeonce.com/products/epson-ecotank-et-2650-all-in-...

Edit: still seems these brick themselves once the ink pad is full. Can't find good data on that so please correct me if I'm wrong.

no_wizard• 6 years ago

Actually yeah, Epson was bleeding market share pretty good until the ecotank lines. It’s legit

0xffff2• 6 years ago

For a start, laser printers have become incredibly cheap. I bough a Brother all-in-one color laser printer about 10 years ago and it's still going. I don't print much so I think I've only had to replace the black toner cartridge once in that whole time.

Unless your primary printing activity is printing photos, there's not much reason to buy an inkjet printer these days.

nadavami• 6 years ago

I've been really happy with a similar Cannon printer (Cannon G3200).

The print quality is quite good, it comes with an insane amount of ink, and you literally buy full replacement bottles of ink and pour them in the tanks.

No artificial page limits, no checks for non-oem ink.

lqet• 6 years ago

I have been using a Brother HL-2130 laser printer which cost less then 100 EUR for nearly 10 years now. Every 1-2 years, I buy a cheap toner (under 20 EUR) online. By far the most reliable printer I have ever owned.

dilly_bar• 6 years ago

I'm also having trouble believing it.

walrus01• 6 years ago

Small Brother lasers

throwanem11• 6 years ago

As another commenter mentioned, laser printers are preferable for documents precisely because of this kind of nonsense. They were already cheaper per page for document printing anyway, but the inkjet manufacturers appear determined to cannibalize their own primary market with these schemes.

That said, since developing a serious interest in photography, I've made the delightful discovery that per-page ink pricing schemes, such as HP's "Instant Ink", can be very effectively leveraged to make photo printing as close to free as it's possible to get, with the incremental cost per print being effectively just that of whatever paper you choose to use.

I've since moved up to a large-format inkjet for most of my prints, not least because I was hard up against the limit of what a general-purpose CMYK system can do, especially when it comes to contrast in monochrome images. But for small-format stuff that isn't quality-critical, the OfficeJet still works fine, and I'm still paying $3 a month for all the ink I can eat.

klodolph• 6 years ago

Inkjet makers are not cannibalizing their own market. They understand the basic reason that people purchase inkjet printers in the first place—because they think about capital costs and not operating costs.

skinkestek• 6 years ago

I've made the delightful discovery that per-page ink pricing schemes, such as HP's "Instant Ink", can be very effectively leveraged to make photo printing as close to free as it's possible to get, with the incremental cost per print being effectively just that of whatever paper you choose to use.

Would you care to add some more details? Is this an all-you-can-print deal with a fixed monthly price or something?

steffan2• 6 years ago

[Spoiler]

My favorite line in the whole thing: "and a large warning sticker that threatened electrocution and prosecution, perhaps simultaneously"

He really is a master of the language. Thanks, Cory, wherever you are!

tekstar2• 6 years ago

[Big Spoiler]

The best line of the book, a big reveal, is hidden in the last line of the story.

mcphage2• 6 years ago

Could you rot13 what you mean by this? I don't understand what the last line of the story reveals, unless I missed part of it?

Causality1• 6 years ago

My price barrier for smart devices is whether I would scream if I dropped it in the toilet and ruined it. $5 smart outlet? Sure I'll put my lamps on those. $25 streaming dongle? All right, that'll last at least five years before Netflix decides it isn't secure enough.

$500 television? Hell no. $1200 in home automation and surveillance linked to a central hub? I wasn't dropped on my head as a child, so no.

bxparks• 6 years ago

Not sure why you were downvoted, so I gave you an upvote. You have a valid opinion, expressed with a bit of amusing hyperbole. I agree with the gist of it, I don't trust any cloud connected smart devices, because I know how the sausage is made, from the device firmware, to the cloud software, to the all-consuming pressure to make a profit regardless of privacy or ethical issues.

mindslight2• 6 years ago

Presumably you're buying more than one remotely-switched outlet, and their software will fail at the same time. So the actual risk there is much higher than $5.

The way I see it is buy devices that can be controlled with Free software, don't give them Internet connectivity, and plan on never "upgrading" the firmware. The TP-LINK Kasa line works well for me (their protocol is trivially obfuscated), as well as anything that can be flashed with Tasmota.

Also in general you don't want to go too cheap on anything that switches line current. I have to wonder how many of those fly by night "Amazon brands" are getting creepage right.

boring_twenties• 6 years ago

Just in case you're not aware, there is a new and much improved free Kasa library in the works: https://github.com/python-kasa/python-kasa

It's already been working perfectly with my HS103 and HS110 plugs for months. The only thing still missing for me is the per-plug energy meter of my HS300 strip, which I hope will be coming very soon.

joshuas• 6 years ago

Sounds like you need a smart toilet lid.

imhoguy• 6 years ago

With DRM! And hope the Internet won't be down in an urgency moment.

TeMPOraL• 6 years ago

At $5 per outlet I'd be worried about one of them burning my house down.

I don't buy smart stuff because the intersection between "expensive enough to not be a fire hazard" and "not 5x overpriced for the value-add" is an empty set.

JoeAltmaier• 6 years ago

Jiminy Crickets, what a diatribe. Maybe that reads like something clever to a layman, but from where I stand its a tired run-on rant. How it got any kind of recognition is a puzzle to me.

bregma3• 6 years ago

Rog, is that you?

nabilhat• 6 years ago

The irony of the ad box blurb for the book itself fits in:

"...currently available in paperback and Kindle formats."

It's also available in several other ebook formats not authorized for use with the affiliate link. The local library offers Adobe EPUB, Open EPUB, and OverDrive Read as well. All the better for reading on my unauthorized jailbroken ereader.

EvanAnderson• 6 years ago

Cory Doctorow makes all of his books available on his website in DRM free formats, as well.

In fact, there's a DRM free audiobook available from his website: https://craphound.com/unauthorizedbread/

jesse_m2• 6 years ago

Also, he gets more of a cut if you buy from him and no DRM! win-win

extra88• 6 years ago

The Kindle edition does not include DRM. I think that's true of all ebooks from the publisher, Tor.

gwbas1c• 6 years ago

Read this as part of Cory Doctorow's "Radicalized" compilation. The whole set of short stories are awesome. If you're enjoying the excerpt, I suggest just buying the book and starting from the beginning.

tyingq• 6 years ago

Is there a list somewhere of consumer stuff that has DRM? I knew about printer ink. But, I was surprised to find that some refrigerators have DRM water filters.

nitrogen2• 6 years ago

First page was hilarious. Does anyone know if there's a way to buy a paper copy? I find reading fiction on a screen much less convenient.

jesse_m2• 6 years ago

Radicalized is in paperback on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Radicalized-Cory-Doctorow/dp/12502292...

It has unauthorized bread in it.

gumby• 6 years ago

She could wash dishes in the sink but how the hell was she supposed to make toast—over a candle?

When I was a kid we just made it in the oven. I don’t remember using an electric toaster before I was a teenager.

One of my friends had a special short door at the top of their oven just for this.

(I suppose in the story the oven is licensed too)

bonzini• 6 years ago

Yeah it turns out the toaster is actually an oven, but until jailbroken you can only use it as a toaster and only with authorized bread.

zozbot234• 6 years ago

Hey, maybe I can run NetBSD on my toaster after all!

yellow_lead• 6 years ago

she was able to run the darknet browser she still had kicking around and do some judicious googling

kelvin0• 6 years ago

I recently watched a great video showing a toaster from the 40's.

It's amazing the features and engineering used to make such a little gem: https://youtu.be/1OfxlSG6q5Y

All this without IoT, Block chain or Deep Learning ;)

dhosek• 6 years ago

I've only read one Doctorow book, Pirate Cinema (plus one long story which I apparently found the premise intriguing and the execution lacking but have otherwise forgotten). I found Pirate Cinema to be annoyingly doctrinaire and not very well written. It was kind of like reading Soviet "proletarian literature" with a different underlying ideology (or the sentimental religious literature popular among some folks). From the brief bit I read and knowing what I know about Doctorow, I would expect this to be more of the same. Ideology never makes for good fiction.

bregma3• 6 years ago

This story is a lesson on why rent seekers should be sought out and extinguished wherever they arise.

fian• 6 years ago

Reminds me of The Toaster, a short story by Piers Anthony, included in Anthonology.

Unauthorized Bread: Jailbreaking IoT toasters

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