Oh no!
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
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System shared this topic
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
It's hitting my DNS server once every 2 seconds for a CDN domain, and every 12 seconds for a time domain. Before I blocked those DNS queries, it was attempting (and failing) to reach them on port 443.
I wonder if this still works: https://syntaxslinger.com/posts/tricking-samsung-tvs-into-thinking-they-have-internet/ or if it will fail due to an invalid HTTPS certificate.... I've not seen it fall back to port 80.
It's not really hurting anything the way it is though, so no big deal.
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It's hitting my DNS server once every 2 seconds for a CDN domain, and every 12 seconds for a time domain. Before I blocked those DNS queries, it was attempting (and failing) to reach them on port 443.
I wonder if this still works: https://syntaxslinger.com/posts/tricking-samsung-tvs-into-thinking-they-have-internet/ or if it will fail due to an invalid HTTPS certificate.... I've not seen it fall back to port 80.
It's not really hurting anything the way it is though, so no big deal.
Oh, and in case anyone is interested in a TV that can be isolated from the internet yet integrated with Home Assistant, it's a Samsung QN32Q8FAAFXZA 32" TV.
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
Perfect. Another good way is if one can block the TV from accessing the internet in the router settings. Then it doesn't matter if it's wired or not. I do this for mine, and for various other iot devices that talk directly to Home Assistant.
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
@matt I am 67 y.o.
I never had a TV that I hated until I bought an LG “smart “ television. -
Perfect. Another good way is if one can block the TV from accessing the internet in the router settings. Then it doesn't matter if it's wired or not. I do this for mine, and for various other iot devices that talk directly to Home Assistant.
@leffe that’s essentially what I’ve done. I use OPNsense as my router / firewall so the TV is configured on a VLAN that has no internet access.
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@matt I am 67 y.o.
I never had a TV that I hated until I bought an LG “smart “ television.@JCBlubaugh I did quite a lot of research to find a TV that wouldn’t mind being dumb but that I could control via Home Assistant. It’s surprisingly hard!
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
@matt What does/can your Home Assistant do with it?
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
@matt
The last Samsung TV I purchased for my mother nagged her constantly about wanting to be connected, so she insisted that I let it connect.
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@JCBlubaugh I did quite a lot of research to find a TV that wouldn’t mind being dumb but that I could control via Home Assistant. It’s surprisingly hard!
FWIW, I have an LG with a device attached to the HDMI ARC port. There are times I notice the "Please connect me to the internet", but mostly it just blows right past that.
I don't have it connected to my network, at all, mostly because I don't care if it's connected to my HomeAssistant, so probably different use cases.
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
@matt
It's definitely necessary to keep the Samsungs isolated. In the process of scanning our IOT network WHILE TURNED OFF, it started fully turning itself on intermittently in the middle of the night. Which is how we discovered the scanning.It's now plugged into a switch in the wall so we can turn off its power supply when not in use. Also controlled via Home Assistant
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Oh no! /s
What a joyous sight! Our new Samsung TV will never see the outside world. It's connected to our network via ethernet, locked on a VLAN so Home Assistant can connect to it, but it can see nothing except my local DNS server (for now).
I've preemptively blocked its WiFi MAC address in case anyone ever accidentally tries to "help" by connecting it to the WiFi.
Fully working with Home Assistant. Dumb screen otherwise. Perfect.
#homeassistant #samsung #tv #opnsense #firewall #privacy
@matt Frankly depressing that it's become hard to find a "dumb" TV and it requires this much work to stop it phoning home. That said, nice work!
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@matt What does/can your Home Assistant do with it?
@mcr314 at the moment just see the status of the TV (on / off), turn it on / off, adjust the volume. Once I plug in some HDMI sources, it might be able to switch between them, not sure.
Honestly, on / off status and switching is all I really need - I mean, it's about all the TV can actually do!
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@matt
The last Samsung TV I purchased for my mother nagged her constantly about wanting to be connected, so she insisted that I let it connect.@brouhaha I'm really hoping that won't be the case. From the research I did, it shouldn't happen, but if it does I'll strongly consider returning the TV. Although I'm not sure I have many other options....
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FWIW, I have an LG with a device attached to the HDMI ARC port. There are times I notice the "Please connect me to the internet", but mostly it just blows right past that.
I don't have it connected to my network, at all, mostly because I don't care if it's connected to my HomeAssistant, so probably different use cases.
@jrconlin @JCBlubaugh I do hope it won't do that. If it does, I'll have a look to see if I can do anything to stop it (e.g. spoofing some of its endpoints, or maybe giving it very restricted access), or perhaps even return the TV.
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@matt
It's definitely necessary to keep the Samsungs isolated. In the process of scanning our IOT network WHILE TURNED OFF, it started fully turning itself on intermittently in the middle of the night. Which is how we discovered the scanning.It's now plugged into a switch in the wall so we can turn off its power supply when not in use. Also controlled via Home Assistant
@me_valentijn woah, that's insane! When you say it was scanning, what was it doing exactly? I should double check that my IoT network has device isolation on to stop it scanning even its own VLAN, although it's not going to find much (or be able to do anything with that information) if it does scan!
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@brouhaha I'm really hoping that won't be the case. From the research I did, it shouldn't happen, but if it does I'll strongly consider returning the TV. Although I'm not sure I have many other options....
@matt
Given that my mother's experience was some years back, it's possible that Samsung may since have caught enough flack about that misbehavior to fix it. -
@matt Frankly depressing that it's become hard to find a "dumb" TV and it requires this much work to stop it phoning home. That said, nice work!
@MichDdev I feel like "it shouldn't be this hard" is a sentiment I've run into often during this house build. We want high quality appliances, and as much as possible we want them integrated into Home Assistant. But local access only - no cloud access.
My only "failure" so far is my F-150 Lightning which uses its own cellular connection for the app. Although I did manage to get a spare key fob and hack it into an ESP32 to give me local-only lock, unlock and remote starting.
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@matt
Given that my mother's experience was some years back, it's possible that Samsung may since have caught enough flack about that misbehavior to fix it.@brouhaha or more worryingly, they decided that the technique worked (she allowed hers to connect eventually!) so they rolled it out more broadly.
I really feel like a nag message like that should be grounds for a warranty claim or return.
