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Damn good point.

Unless you have root and can do anything the hardware is capable of, it's not your device. And you shouldn't let any sort of non-owned devices on your network.

Why? Cause devices controlled by other orgs are a foothold situation. And we've had countless attacks of footholds being used as internal points of attack, DDoS, and other attacks.

That also means that all your "cloud devices" should be able to work 100% offline. If not, return them as defective.



I have a Samsung smart TV it's never seen the internet, I just didn't let it connect - it's a display for a box running Fedora, that is its entire job to be dumb and display whatever is sent down the wire.

Devices that do need to be on the internet but I can foresee no reason they ever need to talk to anything else on the network go on their own VLAN (down to the level of my VR headset since it had a Meta logo on the box...).

My boys gaming PC can't even see my desktop (since there isn't a scenario where it needs to).

Other than the "smart" TV I own nothing "Smart" because I don't want anything smart.


I'm not adverse to smart hardware.

I am adverse to being trapped with rental hardware masquerading as as 'sale'. Almost all corporate cloudshit is that.

As a counter example, I have 2 of these opengarage for my garage doors. They work superbly and integrate seamlessly with HomeAssistant.

https://opengarage.io/

And yes, I control them completely. FLOSS and all. And they just work.


Hunh. This reminds me... I have a copy of ghidra and a bunch of JTAG adaptors. I bet I could suck the firmware out of my old model Visio TV. I already unsoldered the microphone from the motherboard.




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