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Comment by orev | Hacker News Reader

If you have the printer on your network, and any Amazon device on your network, the Amazon device could easily query the printer for ink levels. My Home Assistant does this and I never connected HA to the printer. It’s just part of the status information the printer seems to make available on the network.

It’s not surprising to me that Amazon would do this using one of their devices, as everyone seems to be grabbing as much data as they can. It’s probably described in the T&Cs somewhere (that they can scan your network and use data from it).

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This is why IoT devices on my network get their own subnet and they are blocked from communicating with anything but what I allow them to communicate with, including the Internet.

Also I want to make it clear, it shouldn't have to be this way. Devices should be transparent about how they function, but sadly they are not.

Is your printer an IoT device? Is your Echo an IoT device?

I'd say yes to both, and so the problem would persist.

One way to solve this would be to put every single device on a separate vlan (like some public networks do). Just like NAT, that approach certainly has its advantages for the average user from a security perspective, but forces centralization and usage of third-party servers where it shouldn't be required.

Maybe what we need is a "network administration protocol" that would give you pop-ups on your phone when devices tried to discover what's on your network.

> Is your printer an IoT device? Is your Echo an IoT device?

>I'd say yes to both, and so the problem would persist.

My IoT LAN is configured to keep each device within the subnet isolated from one another. So while they might share a subnet, they aren't able to snoop on each other. They also do not share the same switch.

Out of curiosity, how do you achieve that? One VLAN per IoT device?

Not OP.

This is done via "L2 Isolation". WiFi access points typically have this setting, as do some wired switches (ex: Cisco's PVLAN)

Managed switch with VLAN, WLAN AP with VLAN. My Ubiquiti networking stuff does this but if you want decent priced 10 gbit managed switch you're SOL. You'll end up with China stuff.

Old Brocade switches are quite feature rich, but still affordable.

I do have Ubiquiti, actually, including two 8x10G SFP+ USW-Aggregation, but AFAIK all devices within a VLAN can still communicate with one another. In an ideal world I'd want them to be completely isolated from one another unless I explicitly set up an ACL allowing access.

Within a VLAN, sure, but that is why you should use separate VLANs. Because when you use the same one, you explicitly say: I want those devices to be able to connect to each other.

I just use two.

One for IoT, guest WiFi, etc.

And one for our server, laptops/PC, and mobile devices.

But ideally I'd fine grain it further.

Right, so one VLAN per group of IoT devices you want to segregate together, e.g. a bunch of security cameras and their NVR would go in one VLAN, a sprinkler controller on a separate VLAN, and so on.

I'm on a single VLAN and associated WLAN for all my IoT devices but I would also like to segregate them further. The 4-WLAN limit on Unifi does limit what can be done, however.

You can do client isolation on the WAP. If you do this, the clients cannot contact each other. Then, on the switch you can assign like 4k VLANs. But I'm not sure how to do that. Because all the data arrives on the same port. But in theory, you have a DHCP server for say a /24 and you could give each of those IPs their own VLAN.

FWIW, I try to use wired as much as possible. Although for security cameras people like to use PoE and I think if you can get physical access to the PoE port, you can also try a MITM or a physical sniffer for examples see the stuff Hak5 sells.

Peer to peer isolation is what your missing

You can enable WiFi isolation in most access points. I've thought about a second AP and lan in my router for this reason. My current AP puts guests on a separate subnet not sure how well isolated though.

What would make more sense, but is harder to do, is to use bridge filtering instead of assigning unique VLANs per device.

I keep seeing this suggestion (put devices on a subnet, lock them out of everything else)...

Do you have a link or guide to help me understand how to set this up. It seems like a great idea!

The cheapest way would be to go to your WiFi router and look for "Guest WiFi" settings, hope it's not too cheap that this functionality isn't included, activate said network, and put the devices on the guest WiFi.

More complicated settings involve the keyword "VLAN", afaik most home routers don't have this.

How would you send a data to printer that is in separate subnet?

Unfortunately I do not have a guide, perhaps this would be a good idea for a blog post? I'll write something up when I have a free weekend.

Keep in mind that a lot of this will be heavily dependent on what kind of router and LAN configuration you have.

This is a smart idea now you mention it. Those internet of sh!t devices are back doors onto your network.

This is a good idea that’s inaccessible to >99% of customers. That’s the part that frustrates me. We save ourselves but these companies just couldn’t care less about our teeny tiny slice of the pie.

Also you can use DNS filter like NextDNS.io to block specific domains.

How you setup your LAN printer from subnet to get data from your your main subnet?

Whilst it might be in the T&Cs somewhere, it’s the not-good variety of surprise that a company should really try to avoid.

I don’t have Alexa devices on my network, and I’m glad. I do have other vendor smart things, and I’d absolutely expect a notification if they were going to be poking around at my other devices to send information off to a company for their benefit.

Poor play, Amazon

It’s probably described in the T&Cs somewhere

Which.. I never read but I concur with your theory.

I doubt the legality of a T&Cs that demands permission to use and gather information on the local network and any device connected to it. It seems about as legal as T&Cs that demand the users first born child.

It seems like you haven’t been paying attention to what big tech has been doing the past decade. Every piece of available data is considered as a free-for-all to collect and use however they want. Everything on the web is scraped. Every time you move your phone its location is collected. Everything you say in earshot of a smart speaker is recorded. Every time you turn on a light, the bulb phones home.

There’s no legal rights or enforcement against any of this.

You’re making an is-ought mistake. User belorn only claimed that such collection and recordings would be illegal, not that the law would be enforced.

Time to learn everything they scan for, and set up a honeypot that makes people's Amazon devices fill with dummy devices.

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