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    Ask HN: Tips for hacking a TV?

    76 points fewgrehrehre | 11 comments | 16 Oct 24 03:44 UTC | HN request time: 0.925s | source | bottom

    I've got a spare television lying around (specifically, a Samsung UN24H4500), and I thought it'd be fun to take a crack at seeing what I can do with it. The only hitch is that I've never really done any hardware hacking before, so I don't really know where to start!

    Any tips and pointers would be much appreciated, in terms of common ways to search for and exploit vulnerabilities, or the exploitation of other televisions. Alternatively, if this is an absolute fool's errand, and the whole thing is locked down tighter than Fort Knox, a firm warning that this is not a good thing to dick around with over a weekend would also be appreciated.

    1. fph ◴[18 Oct 24 11:51 UTC] No.41878519[source]▶
    Not an answer but a follow-up question: is there open firmware for TVs like Openwrt for routers? I have never heard of such a project, but it sounds like it would be useful.
    replies(6): >>41878651 #>>41878663 #>>41878861 #>>41879017 #>>41884320 #>>41884336 #
    2. jonwinstanley ◴[18 Oct 24 12:11 UTC] No.41878651[source]▶
    Yes. I’d love this.

    The software on tvs is awful. Plus many new tvs have ads baked in.

    An open source OS would be a dream.

    replies(1): >>41878942 #
    3. WithinReason ◴[18 Oct 24 12:13 UTC] No.41878663[source]▶
    There is this:

    https://github.com/RootMyTV/RootMyTV.github.io

    replies(1): >>41883391 #
    4. phrotoma ◴[18 Oct 24 12:39 UTC] No.41878861[source]▶
    https://www.samygo.tv/
    replies(1): >>41878923 #
    5. xattt ◴[18 Oct 24 12:46 UTC] No.41878923[source]▶
    That project has fallen victim to people losing interest. A section for 2011 model year TVs has WIP tags for the last 9 years. This might as well have a perpetual under construction shovelling man GIF.

    After I install it, then what?

    6. phantomathkg ◴[18 Oct 24 12:49 UTC] No.41878942[source]▶
    Software on TV (and worst, set top boxes) is awful is due to the fact that it is an under power CPU and limited memory. The app you saw is either web app in Webkit Embedded or similar embedded, Android app (Android TV) or Roku brightscript app.
    replies(1): >>41879302 #
    7. user070223 ◴[18 Oct 24 12:57 UTC] No.41879017[source]▶
    Perhaps Google TV(there is both an OS and a service by that name, the OS was once called Android TV)?
    8. ◴[18 Oct 24 13:32 UTC] No.41879302{3}[source]▶
    9. Kirby64 ◴[18 Oct 24 20:52 UTC] No.41883391[source]▶
    Not open source OS, just a homebrew store. Not quite the same thing.
    10. pabs3 ◴[18 Oct 24 23:11 UTC] No.41884320[source]▶
    Another one for LG TVs https://openlgtv.github.io/
    11. pabs3 ◴[18 Oct 24 23:14 UTC] No.41884336[source]▶
    Most of these TVs run Linux. This lawsuit by Software Freedom Conservancy is aiming for eventual creation of an OpenWRT-for-TVs project (similar to how an earlier lawsuit created OpenWRT).

    https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/firmware-liber...

    TBH though, we don't need another distro specific to certain hardware types, instead we need standard distros like Fedora and Debian to support TV hardware and use-cases.