Spoofing the Samsung Smart TV Internet Check

http://www.sodnpoo.com/posts.xml/spoofing_the_samsung_smart_tv_internet_check.xml

by lelf • 12 years ago

198 141 12 years ago

mnkypete• 12 years ago

I really don't like how Samsung handles this.. I couldn't use my TV all morning to watch Youtube (I know, problems..), just because they think "If Samsung is down, don't bother opening the Youtube app". Seriously, what the heck...

Also, this is not the first time this happens.. I mean their data center was on fire (www.engadget.com/2014/04/20/samsung-com-outage-sds-fire/), but isn't there some failover?

madeofpalk• 12 years ago

Apple devices also had a similar problem a while back http://www.zdnet.com/what-went-wrong-with-ios-6-wi-fi-700000...

When iOS or Mac connects to wifi, it hits a similar URL to Apple to check if the device is stuck behind a captive wifi network. If the check failed, it attempts to throw up the networks login page.

But Apple's check server went down, and therefore peoples iPod touches, Macs and iPads got stuck in a nasty cycle of trying to throw up a non-existant login page.

0x0• 12 years ago

Actually it wasn't that the server was down, it was that it was misconfigured and returned unexpected 404 responses which made it look like a captive portal.

benmarks• 12 years ago

Single points of failure everywhere. This is not the future we were promised. At least the fixes are in our hands.

scrollaway2• 12 years ago

Custom and open operating systems are the only way forward against this sort of bullshit. It's not just crappy engineering, it's also TVs doing analytics on what you watch, always-on cameras, etc..

As long as we have the power to root these devices and install our own software on it, we will be fine. But for how long is that going to keep up?

xrjn• 12 years ago

The question isn't necessarily about rooting, seeing as the vast majority of people don't know what that even means. They shouldn't be tracking what we watch in the first place.

Reminds me of this story from a year or two ago, where LG continued collecting data even after the feature had been disabled on their TVs.

userbinator2• 12 years ago

TVs doing analytics on what you watch, always-on cameras

Who's doing the watching now? That sounds ridiculously Orwellian...

As long as we have the power to root these devices and install our own software on it, we will be fine. But for how long is that going to keep up?

The most interesting part of this is that "rooting" often relies on finding and exploiting a vulnerability, something that would be considered detrimental to security and normally thought of as a bug. In other words, this power is coming from having not-so-secure devices. Imagine if this TV was more secure; it used DNSSEC and HTTPS to authenticate/encrypt communications, and was designed to be resistant to tampering via hardware (secure processor, encrypted memory, etc.) -- ostensibly for things like DRM. Do suggestions like "all Internet traffic should be encrypted" start to look less appealing now? To say it plainly, in this case "insecurity is freedom."

kabdib4• 12 years ago

It's not so much a single point of failure as it is colossal stupidity on the part of an engineering team. They just didn't think out the consequences. It's a bad design, but they couldn't tell. They're crappy software engineers.

The problem is that you can't tell this until it fails. You can see a scratched screen or fuzzy display, but you can't detect garbage software until it goes sideways.

But now we have another good data point to support the generalization that the firmware on TVs that doesn't do actual core TV funtionality, like video-related stuff, is pretty bad, and consumers should avoid these features.

bryanlarsen• 12 years ago

The engineers were probably well aware that it was a bad design, but it was an expedient design. "It works, ship it." It's just a matter of priorities and limited resources -- do you work on making the software better or do you harden it against a highly unlikely point of failure?

amirmc4• 12 years ago

If we don't start building (and pushing for) more distributed/decentralised systems then this is the future we can expect more of. Aside from this, why should my TV need to dial home at all?

sjtrny3• 12 years ago

Why? To confirm connectivity.

Welcome to HN, where answering a question gets downvoted.

amirmc4• 12 years ago

My browser doesn't do that so there's really no need for a TV to do that.

conroe64• 12 years ago

You have to act more appalled by trivial annoyances, or you slow down the building of the whole hyperbole storm that the people here like to create. Otherwise, they are unable to distract themselves from the boredom and feelings of lack of empowerment in their lives.

akandiah• 12 years ago

I assume Samsung is using Linux as the underlying OS here. If so, does Linux have a "Network Awareness" API? I understand that Windows has one. More info: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766017%28WS.10%...

LeonidasXIV• 12 years ago

Well, NetworkManager can tell you whether you are connected to some network. But verifying you are on the internet is outside of its scope.

runeks2• 12 years ago

As far as I can see, this issue exists because, fundamentally, there is no such thing as "Internet access". If a device can access only 50% of hosts on the Internet, does it have Internet access? What about 1% or 99%?

Consequently, it makes no sense to make "Internet access" a binary variable that a software system uses to determine whether it has access to all Internet sites.

One would think the YouTube app would have a built-in mechanism for handling a failure when connecting to youtube.com. It's entirely possible that samsung.com could be up, but youtube.com down. I assume the YouTube app gracefully handles this, and this would render Samsung's binary state "Internet present?" variable useless at best.

TL;DR: Having a system-wide "Internet available?" variable is meaningless because individual apps need to be able to handle not being able to connect to a particular host anyway (eg. youtube.com, netflix.com).

zachlipton2• 12 years ago

Well, the system-wide "internet available?" variable isn't completely useless from a user perspective.

If youtube.com happens to be down for whatever reason, there isn't much the user can do about it except wait, so there isn't much for the YouTube to do besides display a standard error message and call it a day.

But in the more common case where the user's internet connection is unavailable or misconfigured, there are troubleshooting steps the user can take (make sure it's plugged in, try turning the router off and on again, check network settings, etc...).

I suspect the design was to help users get their TVs connected to the internet by providing more useful diagnostics when they are offline. To do that, you need some kind of system-level check for connectivity. Now, there are certainly better ways they could have implemented the feature, ways that didn't involve a single point of failure where a fire at one building means that millions of TVs can't access Netflix or YouTube for no good reason, but the intent wasn't completely meaningless.

thejosh• 12 years ago

Oh boyo.

We have samsung smart tvs at home, which Plex runs on top of... looks like I'm going to have to implement something like this with openWRT in future..

kenrose• 12 years ago

Devices that infer that connectivity to one site implies connectivity to the Internet are flawed. Having connectivity to one site means only that a route exists between you and the remote host. That's it. It says nothing about any other site. It's generally not good to do "Internet connectivity" checks. Just check to see if the site you want to connect to is responding. In the case of Samsung, who cares if samsung.com is down if I want YouTube. Just connect to YouTube and if that's down, then tell me.

The only useful exception to the above that I've seen is for Wi-Fi hotspot detection (e.g., checking a known response from Microsoft NCSI). The key difference here is that if the NCSI server is down or not responding, the user is not blocked from trying to connect.

EvanAnderson2• 12 years ago

Microsoft published a description of the communications, too: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc766017(v=ws.10)...

threedaymonk• 12 years ago

It's quite useful, so implemented it in bash: https://github.com/threedaymonk/ncsi

kiallmacinnes3• 12 years ago

So, yes, they are broken when you think about them like that. But, they cover the 95% use case... That case where most people say "The Internet is down" ;)

Giving the 95% a good experience should always be prioritised above giving 100% of users a mediocre experience.

kiallmacinnes3• 12 years ago

I always wish people would reply when downvoting.. A -1 without a comment could mean a million different things.. :(

ryandrake3• 12 years ago

Browsing samsung.com on ones TV's close to a 0% use case, not a 95% use case for users. Therefore checking to make sure samsung.com is up helps about 0% of their users.

zachlipton2• 12 years ago

See, that doesn't really describe the situation here. The internet was working just fine, but samsung.com was down. As a result, the TV wouldn't let users get to Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, or other services because it insisted it was offline, even though those services were working perfectly fine. The problem is that that for virtually every user, the TV was insisting "the internet is down," but their connections were working just fine.

runeks2• 12 years ago

This just reaffirms my impression of Samsung as a decent hardware company and a poor software company.

I was thrilled to switch from my Samsung Galaxy S3 to my Nexus 4. The S3 had horrible Samsung-equivalent apps for everything: email, chat, a browser, and a lot of system services that I couldn't uninstall. It also had some specially built update mechanism, separate from Google Play, that would drain my battery, until it was fixed.

I like Samsung though, as long as they stick to producing hardware. My ARM Chromebook is a lovely device: Samsung hardware with Google software on it.

dcosson• 12 years ago

I overrode the DNS and pointed it to 127.0.0.1 and tried again.

Is there an easy way to spoof that on your local home network?

EvanAnderson2• 12 years ago

Run your own local DNS server. Virtually every lightweight router-oriented Linux distro includes dnsmasq if you don't want to run a full-blown DNS server.

Piskvorrr3• 12 years ago

Moreover, your router is very likely to already run dnsmasq under the hood.

keithgabryelski• 12 years ago

testing a connection for various features is not as robust as actually trying the operation you want to complete and determining if it worked.

drop all the extra work and let code fail gracefully while in action.

thefreeman• 12 years ago

I wouldn't be suprised if it's vulnerable to XXE too ( http://projects.webappsec.org/w/page/13247002/XML%20Entity%2... )

Bud3• 12 years ago

"Smart" TVs are dumb, by design, in their very conception. TVs get upgraded perhaps once a decade or so. They don't need to have software in them, and shouldn't. Leave that to people and companies who actually know how to produce software. TVs should display an image. That's it. Nothing else.

There are no exceptions.

CSDude• 12 years ago

I bet Samsung knows how to do software, it is just a minor wrong practice of implementation, it should have another URLs for failsafe. SmartTV s makes some tasks easy, at least it allows you to Skype someone on a nice and huge screen.

By your logic the cellphones should not be smart too, they should only call people, nothing else.

Bud3• 12 years ago

No. Please don't put words in my mouth. :) Cellphones are an entirely different product in several ways. Most notably, they are portable, need to stand alone without other helper devices, function as complete computers, and are upgraded approximately every 1-2 years by most users. TVs possess none of these attributes.

That's why it's great for a cellphone to run a full modern OS, and why it's NOT great for a TV to do so. TVs last across multiple tech generations. They should contain the bare minimum of software needed to display whatever content you pump into them. Nothing else.

Mister_Snuggles3• 12 years ago

Why should it even have to check a Samsung URL? Why not just let each "app" decide if it can get to what it needs to?

Imagine if your Samsung phone couldn't do anything that required an internet connection because Samsung's site was down. This is pretty much the same thing, IMHO.

Samsung's site being down or unreachable should have no bearing on the performance of the Netflix app whatsoever.

kiallmacinnes3• 12 years ago

I have to agree with the parent post, at least partially, current smart TVs are useless. But.. next gen? Maybe they'll get better.

Smart TVs that exposed ubiquitous hardware - like i386 did for desktops and laptops - where you can choose to run Windows/Linux/BSD would be ideal.. I'd choose a mix of Plex and XBMC given the choice... They provide real value atop the TV platform. Samsung and friends have a huge amount of catch-up to do before they are real contenders when it comes to having the best software (and even then .. Plex/XBMC need to double down on their "Mom" useability..)

(I have a Samsung TV, and recommend them, but always tell people to avoid the SmartTV gimmick. Plex and a Chromecast give a 1000x better experience for those who download, and Netflix etc + Chromecast cover those who don't)

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

"I bet Samsung knows how to do software"

Speaking as someone who is often forced to use Samsung software (particularly wrt/their Android phones), that would be a bad bet to make.

roel_v• 12 years ago

Eh, no. The single most useful tv I have ever owned is my current one, a 2011 Samsung, with a built-in dlna client. Fuck mucking about with two, three or more remotes, set-top boxes, and all that. I'm never going back to that.

sjtrny3• 12 years ago

No software? So hard coded firmware like on CRTs? Personally I like having TV guide functionality, the ability to browse USB media and stream content from iView straight from my TV.

walshemj• 12 years ago

Or get updated iPlayer from the BBC though I do wish ITV would get thier act together and produce a working catchup service.

Thats one ABC1 viewr you have lost right there guys I gave up on whitechappel as your crappy catchup service was totaly unusable.

darklajid2• 12 years ago

I agree. Worse, the software is crap from the start. I have one of these Samsung TVs. It is offline and will be forever in its lifetime.

Not only is the software that comes with it really useless, it phones home the first time you do connect it and installs a sh*tload of crapware, depending on your region. In my case lots of useless stuff around sports and tabloids. These apps are then prominently featured in the TV's menu.

No, you cannot diaable or remove them, nor reclaim that screen estate and put something else there. You install a couple things and have to scroll to find those, while the absolutely insane garbage sits in the middle of the screen. Only way back: Factory reset, never connect it again. Smart..

platz• 12 years ago

yep, this post laments the problems when "smart" automation often goes wrong - also touching on automating tasks where people need to pay attention at the same time, such as driving or aviation:

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140308200904-1...

pdonis3• 12 years ago

No, you cannot diaable or remove them

But if the OP article is correct, you can prevent the TV from phoning home in the first place by spoofing the other way -- say, configuring the DNS that the TV sees to automatically return "no answer" for www.samsung.com. The question is, will the TV still see your local network? If so, you can stream to it from a DLNA server, as someone else upthread pointed out.

esonderegger2• 12 years ago

I tend to agree with you, with one minor exception. If you're going to put an ethernet jack on a TV anyway because people seem to like having Netflix apps on their tv, I'd love it if there were some basic "dumb" software as well, like an RTSP/RTMP client.

At work, we have five of these Samsung Smart TVs and if I want to get a video signal from my control room on to one of them, I have to send it via HD-SDI into the main video router, then run coax from the router to the tv, then use an SDI to HDMI adapter (the cheapest of which is the monoprice $100 one). The picture ends up looking great, but it doesn't exactly feel like 2014.

kalleboo3• 12 years ago

I'd love it if there were some basic "dumb" software as well, like an RTSP/RTMP client.

No DLNA?

milkshakes• 12 years ago

but then how would they phone home with automatic content recognition fingerprints so that samsung could tool up its secret tv-retargeting department? oh, wait...

mobiplayer3• 12 years ago

Au contraire. They know how to produce software, they just don't seem to get networking at all and that's an issue I've seen on my developers out there.

mobiplayer3• 12 years ago

Not sure how it happened, but s/my/many.

Also, I'm sorry guys, but most of you don't really get advanced networking concepts. Just like I don't get many advanced software architecture topics. It's a matter of specialisation.

Shinkei• 12 years ago

There are no exceptions.

Wow, well I guess the issue is closed. I wish they had contacted you from the start, otherwise this multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation could've avoided the entire market. /s

I mean are you intentionally being dense? It has been a LONG time coming to supplant the multiple devices I have to keep around my TV just to use cable, streaming services, etc. Now I don't need to fire up the Wii if I want to watch Hulu or Netflix, movies off a media drive or USB. If only I could integrate the cable box into the TV, then it would really be a game changer.

I don't know about you, but I consider myself an above-average tech consumer and I value simplicity and if companies can manage to keep my TV functional for the next 5-7 years with all of my services, then it is money well spent.

differentView3• 12 years ago

How many years do you plan on keeping your TV? How long do you think TV manufacturers will continue to support an old TV model?

chavesn2• 12 years ago

I agree with your well-placed sarcasm -- this is not a black and white issue.

However, I disagree that there is fundamental value in built-in TV software supplanting third-party devices. That is, unless a software company is making the software.

I have a Roku, and built-in software from Sony on a blu-ray player (on separate TVs). The Roku is so much better that it's painful to use the TV without it:

- The buffering is much worse on the Sony. When it switches between ads and the video it takes several seconds to rebuffer.

- The delay between menus is measured in seconds, while the Roku is almost instantaneous

- It's almost like Sony didn't even have one UX designer working on their project. It will do idiotic things like when Hulu opens, create a modal dialog that says "The internet content is ready" and I must click OK to proceed.

- The remote and other menus are slow and hard to decipher just like you'd expect from built-in software.

The point is that building the user experience of a video client is not trivial. I can't even blame Sony, really -- a non-software company will never do a good job at that kind of thing.

The Roku is a world of difference and until a company like that is building the built-in software, the mainstream of the market will be in third-party devices.

CamperBob2• 12 years ago

...otherwise this multinational, multi-billion dollar corporation could've avoided the entire market. /s

(Shrug) They could always focus on making the best TV display they possibly can, and see how that works out for them. Nobody asked them to build the next-generation WebTV.

AnthonyMouse2• 12 years ago

I don't know about you, but I consider myself an above-average tech consumer and I value simplicity and if companies can manage to keep my TV functional for the next 5-7 years with all of my services, then it is money well spent.

The problem with "smart TV" is that it's inherently a conflict of interest. It would be great if Samsung sold a TV with SamsungOS on it and if I don't like it or they stop supporting it I could easily replace it with Android or Ubuntu, but they don't sell that. Because they want to spam your TV with ads and force you to buy a new one on their schedule.

It's obvious why they want to sell it that way. It's not obvious why anyone should want to buy it that way.

ezy• 12 years ago

What makes Smart TV's basically useless long-term is that throwaway line you put on the end about the cable box.

The same is true of AppleTV, playstation, xbox and every game console in existence. Some of this is obviously hardware based, but a lot of it is about differentiation. CableCard has existed for at least a decade now, but good luck trying to get your cable company to admit it. Every single one of these guys wants you to stay in their particular ecosystem, and "smart" TV is just another ecosystem Samsung wants you to buy into with the associated limitations -- either introduced by Samsung or the other vendors (lockout).

What people really need is better integration between all the devices they hook to their TV. It's bizarre (but like I said, not totally unexpected) that a consumer electronics device is so hard to use that way compared to a radically more complex personal computer (plug most usb devices from a big box store into a mac or pc and it'll just work for its intended purposes without a hassle nowadays).

One way to accomplish that is to shove all the functionality into one device, but as I mentioned above, it doesn't actually work except for a few limited cases. Honestly, the closest you get to a true "smart" experience is a top-end harmony remote -- and that's obviously not that close at all.

My basic objection to smart tv is that I have the same experience using a harmony remote, it adds nothing. And the smart features are virtually guaranteed to whither away long before the actual tv outlives its usefulness. It's like the digital channel tuner on the same set -- useful in odd circumstances, but practically useless having long been long surpassed by cable tv.

ryandrake3• 12 years ago

We're going to look back and laugh at "Smart" TVs like we currently laugh at TVs with built-in VHS players.

kachnuv_ocasek• 12 years ago

Absolutely agree. Computers should only be used to crunch numbers for particle scientists and not for sharing information, let alone for entertainment.

pyre2• 12 years ago

Right. Because the currently 'Smart' TVs are at the cutting edge of user interface design...

If Samsung/Sony/etc thought that they had chops to make a good device to connect a TV to the Internet, then maybe they wouldn't feel the need to package it with the display device, and just release it stand-alone.

workhere-io• 12 years ago

Totally disagree. I love the fact that I can watch Netflix without some box or computer connected to my screen and an extra remote control. Having just the Smart TV is a cheaper and simpler solution, and is easier to set up.

The fact that Samsung haven't gotten things quite right with their Smart TVs doesn't mean I'm going to buy an Apple TV or some other box.

amitparikh• 12 years ago

The TVs aren't "Smart" for the consumers. They are "Smart" for the producers/advertisers/etc that want to data mine your television consumption (now including various streaming services).

null_ptr• 12 years ago

There you go. Weren't LG smart TVs found to phone home the file names of media you play on it off your own external storage? No thanks.

amiramir• 12 years ago

Samsung seems to understand that TVs get upgraded at a slower rate than the TV's smarts evolve and that software updates can only get you so far. They have started to ship something named the Evolution Kit. For around $200 it allows the user to unscrew the CPU module from their existing TV and install a more modern CPU/software combo.

https://www.samsung.com/us/video/tvs-accessories/SEK-1000/ZA

dublinben• 12 years ago

That upgrade is twice the price of the highest-end Roku or AppleTV. Samsung still doesn't get it.

AnthonyMouse2• 12 years ago

Completely worthless. The CPU in a TV is never the problem. That's why they use such low powered CPUs to begin with. Nobody even makes a TV with a Core i7 even though there is no technical reason why they couldn't, because there is no demand for it. All anyone cares is that it can decode video at the native resolution, which the original CPU will be able to do until all the pixels wear out.

nilsimsa• 12 years ago

There are usually multiple models of the TV. You can buy one without the "smart" features if you like or even disable them on an existing one.

skyebook• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, the non-smart choices pretty much leave you with tv's that have a real lack of connectivity since they appear to be the 'lower end' now.

nanidin• 12 years ago

What's next - cell phones should only call people and nothing else? Watches should only tell us the time?

krapp• 12 years ago

The whole idea of using phones to "call" people is absurd, practically barbaric. No one even does that anymore, having to do your own talking, memorizing numbers... it's too much work. This so-called 'feature' should be removed from all future phones and replaced with an app which correlates the social media posts from your friends and translates them to audio using natural speech synthesis.

Pxtl• 12 years ago

The problem is that the TV industry has l lagged behind the monitor industry in this understanding. A monitor knows it's justa screen... It does nothing without an attached system. I want a TV like that. Let the attached device control the on/off of the TV and the volume, and if you need to attach a peripheral, then it attaches to the device.

TV ports are digital now, they could power and give control to another device. Just stick a port on the back for the box . I actually love the stick form-factor that's growing now, let's you hide the device and get the sleek appearance of a smart TV without the cruft.

Too• 12 years ago

Define "attach peripheral". Is wireless display over DLNA ok?

Smart TVs actually have many nice features many people don't know about, dlna being the most prominent. Universal remote being another of them, with my TV I just say I have device x on hdmi2 and the TV remote will then be able to do almost anything I need to control on that device.

The built in apps are usually crap but I do see the value in having the ability to install them, why should I have to buy yet another device if I just want to watch Netflix, the TV already has the processing power to do so. Although arguably a chromecast is practically free compared to the price of a TV.

Nick_C• 12 years ago

Despite the other commentators' views, I completely agree. My Panasonic's YouTube app cannot ffwd or rewind. WTF! For a video streaming app! Unbelievable.

What I do is fire up the XBox. It's a brain-dead app there too+, but at least I can rewind a few seconds if I missed a word or two.

+ Titles truncated too much; no comments viewer; unresponsive UI.

nl2• 12 years ago

TVs get upgraded perhaps once a decade or so.

Wrong. I've upgraded my TV twice in the past 5 years, and the average TV replacement cycle has decreased to 4 years[1].

They don't need to have software in them, and shouldn't.

Yes they do. How else do I watch Youtube and Plex on it? Plug another box in, with another remote?

Leave that to people and companies who actually know how to produce software.

I agree that would be nice. Fortunately Samsung has a completely inadequately documented but reasonably open API for building SmartTV apps.

TVs should display an image.

That would be called a monitor.

There are no exceptions.

I'm one.

Does the fact that I use the Youtube, Vimeo, iView and Plex apps on my Samsung TV more than I watch broadcast TV not apply for some reason?

[1] http://gigaom.com/2012/01/05/tv-replacement-cycle/

timdiggerm• 12 years ago

Yes they do. How else do I watch Youtube and Plex on it? Plug another box in, with another remote?

Frankly, that other box should be the one handling the TV tuning too.

stronglikedan• 12 years ago

Of course there are exceptions. My girlfriend being one of them. She's not capable of switching and input and using a different remote to control a different device - or even a universal remote to control both devices, for that matter. If she cannot get to Netflix with the push of a button, then I get a call every time she wants to watch Netflix when I'm not home. Smart TVs make technology accessible, and that's why they are popular.

logfromblammo• 12 years ago

This is exactly the sort of problem that made me decide to buy a regular television after having previously bought a "smart" television. It does not anger me quite so much as Microsoft trying to get me to pay them a subscription fee to access my own network hardware, but it does drive me in the direction of wanting an open-source set-top HTPC to sit at the interface between dumb viewscreen and Internet.

markomikolavcic• 12 years ago

Very helpful. I have the LG smart tv and i would like to know if in my case (lg) could happen the same... Just in case to know if it happens. my opinion about these smart tv's is very positive. I like to browse or watch films over netflix or others. Hope that in a couple of years it gets even smarter :)

turrini• 12 years ago

It amazes me that most of these "Smart" TVs don't use SSL or any sort of encryption in first place.

mobiplayer3• 12 years ago

I know first hand some other brands do.

nfriedly• 12 years ago

Nice work! I ran into the same issue with my samsung "smart" TV, and I was starting to set up a similar hack when my wife beat me to the punch: hit the "factory reset" option in the menu, and then it loses the wifi settings and stops trying to check for updates.

voltagex_• 12 years ago

So from that XML, you seem to control the URLs the TV will grab. Just a few buffer overflows away from root on the TV, and of course you don't really own the hardware you bought until you have root, right?

chavesn2• 12 years ago

It's a good thing they didn't use HTTPS. And a good thing that something else doesn't actually rely on samsung.com (listing services, API endpoints, whatever).

This is a cool hack for now but if I had to make a prediction I'd bet there's a future coming where this isn't possible, where the two are even more intertwined -- even though most of us know they don't need to be and wouldn't design our own systems that way.

nixy• 12 years ago

I build "smart" TV apps for a living. Samsung's connectivity check for their TVs from 2010 has a list of five domains that it checks against. Discovered this during some debugging a couple of years ago. The list, in the order pings are made, is:

  icq.com (not kidding)
  yahoo.com
  samsung.com
  google.com
  Some other domain I can't remember

aqme28• 12 years ago

And it requires all five to connect, rather than just one?

kdot• 12 years ago

I guess this explains why my Fios TV app isn't working.

beagle3• 12 years ago

I have a Vizio "smart tv" which is about as "smart"

ndesaulniers• 12 years ago

Wow now I want to buy a DRM... I mean "Smart" TV!

shavenwarthog2• 12 years ago

A while back I "hacked" my Samsung TV. I spoofed a DNS entry to point to my laptop, and put a tiny webserver on it. Then I could hit the "News" button on my remote and get obscene fortune cookies on my TV!

Then I turned it off. Internet on TV is silly, as far as I can tell.

My girlfriend's wonderful Panasonic has tons of internet features -- web, youtube. Web is nearly useless because of lack of keyboard; youtube is awkward; vimeo isn't bad. Using an Android app, selecting your youtube video, then doing "send to TV" is great when we bother to do it.

The "smart" Panasonic is a dumb screen in front of Roku. The only other non-dumb features we use is the "play videos from SD card" feature, and the "play from DLNA (my laptop)" feature -- both get used quite often, and work well.

Spoofing the Samsung Smart TV Internet Check

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