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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

I remember the days before wifi routers came with randomized passwords. We walked around with a backpack that connected to open wifi, logged into the admin page with the default credentials, and changed the wifi name/password and the admin password.

We were evil kids and possibly part of the reason there are randomized passwords now.

Anyway, this is basically the same attack, just with a B&E and a lot more temporary. I'm actually most surprised that these devices don't appear to do any buffering when a connection is lost. And even then, the internet will not stay active if the thieves just go to the neighborhood junction box and pull the plug on the house.

:sigh: too much reliance on technology...

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Security has never been a concern for consumer devices. When I was a kid the local telecable remotes worked on all of the boxes in my neighborhood. I used to sneak up to people's windows and changing their channel. I bet my dad wondered where his remote was.

My neighbor and I moved in the same week and happened to buy the exact same doorbell unit. Every time someone rang the doorbell at either of our houses, the doorbell in the other house would ding too. It took us several weeks before we realized we were both answering the door every time someone came to one of our doors.

It was an easy fix, but hilarious.

A friend of mine had a telescope in his upstairs room, the window of which overlooked a lake with several other houses in view across the lake.

1: Get the other house's TV sighted in the eyepiece.

2: Move your eye out of the way and hold the remote control up to the eyepiece.

3: ...

4: Move back and observe the confusion.

I am so skeptical of this story but I want it to be true so badly.

If I shine a laser through, does it really focus on the sighted spot? Does the coating on the telescope not filter IR? I thought most did maybe not. Could I shine a flashlight through and illuminate the room? How is that not the same?

1. Optics are symmetric, so it will shine on the spot with the same total power, which might not be noticable.

2. Maybe! Cheap ones might not even have a coating.

3. You can do this! See (1) for how much brightness you can expect.

If it worked, it’s due to televisions having a relatively low activation threshold for user comfort, so you don’t have to aim the remote accurately, or often at all! Often secondary or even tertiary (or more) IR reflections will trigger television functions. For a quick sample, try aiming your remote at the opposite wall and seeing if the tv turns on. I don’t doubt this story, but I also believe it would have worked merely by pointing the remote at the TV, telescope or no.

> For a quick sample, try aiming your remote at the opposite wall and seeing if the tv turns on.

But first make sure it isn't radio controlled. The remotes at my old house were all assigned a cable box and you could control that box with its remote from anywhere in the house.

> > For a quick sample, try aiming your remote at the opposite wall and seeing if the tv turns on.

> But first make sure it isn't radio controlled.

Based on my experience, this isn't actually a problem for people interested in trying it with their TV as RF remotes included with STBs, streaming sticks, etc., still have IR transmitters built in to control the TV.

Specifically, the actual device (e.g. cable box) is controlled with RF signals (often bluetooth) but the power and volume buttons are often controlled via IR because those are functions of the TV and most TVs have IR receivers. TV power/volume can also be conttolled via HDMI-CEC in theory, but in practice I've run into compatibility issues more often than not that way whereas doing it over IR just works.

For #2 - Assuming it's not a spotting scope or similar, filtering IR wouldn't have much benefit. An IR filter might even hurt for the typical star gazing type usage, depending on the equipment used. Cameras for looking at things in the night sky often explicitly lack IR filters (often at massively increased cost) to increase sensitivity to any available light.

Very much this. Any IR filtering on a telescope would not be a very favored option. There is so much interesting stuff to see in the IR range. To your point about lack of IR filters, there are places that offer a service to have the IR filter removed from your DSLR. You can just add an IR filter to your lens to have it back to "normal".

This seems incorrect. Everywhere I look I hear effectively:

> All refractive optics require IR filters.

The reason seems to be it prevents "bloating" of bright points of light - eg stars, and increases contrast in the visible range by cutting off UV and IR (which CCDs are apparently sensitive to), so it is in fact desirable to have IR filtered out.

Now, does that mean it's default? Maybe not.

Possibly desirable for optimal image quality, sure, but taking pictures is not the only use for a telescope. Many things just require knowing how much light is present, and how that changes over time. Occultations are one such case which I have familiarity with. Objects are often so faint that every little bit of light is essential to improve SNR - https://occultations.org/

IR filters are generally pretty effective too, so just having one anywhere will do the trick unless you're dealing with a lot of light. Cameras which would be undesirably sensitive to IR would usually have the filter built in, basically right on top of the sensor. No need for added coatings on the telescope itself.

remotes are not lasers, since a laser would only worked if you point at the small ir receiver with high accuracy. Instead remotes are regular IR which is allowed to scatter.

It is the same! Sounds like it's time to craigslist a cheap telescope and engage in some fuckery of your own!

Okay that's ingenious. I love it.

I used to have a TV-B-Gone universal remote with only one button - OFF (oh hey it is still a thing https://www.tvbgone.com/). It was glorious, I used it in airports back when they had TVs all over the place, in hotel bars, in airport shuttles. It came with a booklet warning you about dangers of using it in a crowded sports bar during large sporting events...

I remember that being the norm as early as about 15 years ago.

Thus the reason behind the security mantra, "If it's not secure by default, then it's not secure".

Because normies know very little, if anything, about IT security. And to be fair, they shouldn't have to. When you buy a house or a car, how often do you take time to examine the mechanism in the door locks, and check to see how easy it is to pick them? Or do you rely on the locks generally being secure, albiet far from Fort Knox-grade.

That is true, BUT people are willing to learn about securing their cars and houses. They will take precautions. People do change their locks, buy security systems for their cars take care that they do not leave keys lying around. They are willing to make an effort to lock their doors, keep and eye on things. They will avoid buying things with weak security.

When it comes to IT they expect someone else to do it. The problem is no one else cares about your security as much as you do.

> check to see how easy it is to pick them

Never, based on how easy some cheap locks are to pick.

I pick locks for hobby and agree with this statement

I occasionally watch The Lockpicking Lawyer videos on YouTube, and I also agree wit6h this statement.

Ah ha. Are you a toool member per chance ?

No, I started last year, by myself, didn't actually know this organisation, I just get training locks on shops and unlock them, I also see that they are specifically in US, I am from Italy, so there is no one of them around me :(.

There was a thing 2-3 years ago around me where you'd go in Mcdonalds and they had several SSIDs in there called MCD0NALDS MCDWIFI MCDOONALDS MCRONALDS etc. If you connected to any of them, the sign in page would Goatse you.

I suspect it was a plug in ESP32 dongle or something hiding in the restaurant.

I do miss the days of hacks that are primarily just there to mess with people.

So kids might stumble upon it on their cartoons tablet when getting a Happy Meal?

Some prankster would feel bad when asked to explain themself to a parent or detective.

They likely would never had to explain themselve anyway. The fact the device is found doesn't mean the prankster would get caught. It is not like they will look for fingerprints and ADN for a small prank.

Unless the parent complains to TV news, who get B-roll of the McDonald's playground and Disney and other symbols of American childhood wholesomeness, and spin a narrative about some cyber-predator using computer hackery to reach out and traumatize children. A predator who apparently was physically at the location, possibly returning frequently to observe reactions to their prank, and who knows what all their intentions. Then they might become a priority to catch.

But my point wasn't that they'd get caught, but that those who were only (non-sociopath) pranksters would feel bad, when they started to realize that pranks can have serious unintended effects for themselves and others. Few teens would intentionally show goatse to a young child. The prankster just didn't think this one through, past "wouldn't it be funny if someone saw goatse due to a clever hack of mine", past the misdirected teen impulses to stir things up.

I remember driving around, getting lost, then finding a neighborhood busting out my laptop and figuring out where I was via mapquest in order to get home many times.

Also made sure to check my myspace. Never did anything particularly evil. Definitely downloaded some movies off Kazaa via my neighbor's wifi, because it was faster than my wifi.

Realistically, if you're going to have wireless security gear, it needs to detect when it's being jammed and immediately sound the alarm. That's the only way it's even remotely viable. Just recording people stealing your stuff isn't enough.

A friend and I made a yagi antenna from a threaded rod, some nuts, and a Pringles can. We never really did anything with it, but it was interesting in the early days of who did/didn't have WiFi. The branch of the Fed put out some serious signal back then though. I remember passing it on the highway, and received more packets from it than from home networks from slower drives in local neighborhoods.

I miss the days of open-by-default wifi. I remember my uncle's internet connection was provided by a coffee can taped to his window that he threaded his antenna through, and when I first moved out of my folks house, living close enough to neighbors who paid for me to torrent movies.

Of course it's less useful now, even the cheap prepaid mobile phone plans will get you a usable internet connection.

> I miss the days of open-by-default wifi.

So does every wannabe be l33t hax0r.

> We were evil kids

Not to me. As far as I'm concerned, you improved the status quo by punishing the laziness of corporations. They half-ass the products with complete impunity. You showed them what happens when they do that.

Backpack? I used to walk around with a Nintendo DS that had a mod running off of a microsd card

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