How to kill a set top box ?

Katherine shane said:

Nigel Goodwin : This is only for educational purposes only." Like a penetration testing on any product. Find fault and fix it. In this case i could able to damage a set top box microprocessor without opening the case. Here I'm not able to fix it but just for fun.

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Sorry, utter load of crap - supposed 'educational purpose' is meaningless and just a pathetic attempt at an excuse for something dubious or illegal.

i've seen talks on youtube about various IOT devices, and how to get a root shell on them. recently Samsung announced that smart TVs made before a certain date will no longer work with Netflix beginning Dec 1st. however, you can get the source code for their smart TVs and "roll your own" firmware. it's all open source stuff, and if you have programming skills you can build your own customized firmware and update it to the TV using a thumb drive. while this is true of Samsung, other manufacturers may or may not have open source firmware.

unclejed613 said:

i've seen talks on youtube about various IOT devices, and how to get a root shell on them. recently Samsung announced that smart TVs made before a certain date will no longer work with Netflix beginning Dec 1st.

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Don't quite see the relevance to this thread? - but it's NOT that the TV's are stopping working, it's that Netflix are discontinuing the service they connect to. This is a common occurrence, and has already been done by the BBC, YouTube, and various others - and will continue to happen.

'SMART' TV's are no such thing, far better to simply buy a Firestick (or similar) which will make any TV look 'stupid', and will work for agreat deal longer than any TV.

As for 're-programming your TV', do people the skills to do so?, do they have the tools to do so?, and how much of the software is open source and available?.

The Netflix part will presumably be a separate 'app', and there's certainly no guarantee that the hardware of the TV has the capability of connecting to an alternative service, and if it's hardware is up to the job (TV's are made VERY much down to a price, and a different service may require far more memory than available).

radiation.

Thread locked.
JimB