Post #4247054
2026-07-30 17:10 UTC
Replies (9)
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@adamshostack@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 17:11
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange So you're saying there's pros and cons? 😇
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@JustinDerrick@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 17:42
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange To me, it sounds like they’re losing money on each device sale, knowing they can make the money back after the sale (“The secret ingredient is *crime*…”) I wonder if any of these sell at a price point that make a compelling argument for buying them to flash custom firmware for some other purpose.
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@dalias@hachyderm.io 2026-07-30 18:08
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange IOW they rent out your ip address as a residential proxy but they also defraud adtech companies, so who can tell if they're good or bad?
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@nixCraft@mastodon.social 2026-07-30 18:31
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange Nothing good come out this AI generated bullshit while people losing jobs and their work is stolen by AI companies.
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@briankrebs@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 17:35
A couple of teasers from the story: Bitsight found the H96 devices were either relaying residential proxy traffic or participating in ad fraud, but never both at the same time. In fact, they concluded that when these TV boxes detect an HDMI signal from an attached television — indicating the user intends to stream video content — the box is usually functioning as a residential proxy. When the TV is off, it switches back to waiting for ad fraud jobs. Falé said the Fengwo Group’s domain shared its SSL certificate data with other domains associated with the apps found on H96 devices, specifically the phone spoofing mechanism. He noted the domain also has an internal wiki platform that directly ties the Fengwo Group to a proprietary implementation of a Google-built visual programming language called Blockly, which was originally designed to help kids learn how to write software. According to Bitsight, the Fengwo Group’s employees use Blockly to build the sham websites, allowing low-skilled operators to drag blocks of code together in their Blockly editor — without any need to understand what the underlying code blocks do or how they work.
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@tessarakt@mastodon.social 2026-07-30 17:19
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange Defrauding advertising networks? That doesn't sound so bad.
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@timo21@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-07-30 17:28
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange This makes me wonder what Murdoch's intention is in buying ROKU.
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@garlickles@infosec.exchange 2026-07-30 20:59
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange I linked this article to a family member, who finally became convinced to take it off his network. Thanks for writing this.
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@cbleslie@hachyderm.io 2026-07-30 17:33
@briankrebs@infosec.exchange We desperately need a good opensource streaming Android Rom (distro). Lineage OS has just started work on this sort of thing, but the applicability is narrow. One of the reasons is that most of these devices need "exploits" to get the rom swapped out. Proprietary hardware is annoying. Self repair laws can't come fast enough. :|