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▲ Hacker reverses Samsung TV, finds on-board AI listening OpenAI account suspended(reddit.com)
201 points by testing22321 6 hours ago | 51 comments
▲jck86 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

To what extend do these "smart" products state how, when and what data they are collecting and selling?

Isn't it high time for legislation that at least makes it clear on the box what kind of sensors and integrations it has and how bad the product is privacy wise?

Also, shouldn't corporate spying disguised as automated content recognition and classification be limited or outright be banned?

And all this connected garbage should by law be able to function with the cord cut and without registration, and if an update negatively changes the advertised product characteristics the customer must be allowed to return it for full paid price even if it is 10 years old. Force the manufactures to make statements on the "box" about the features, the support duration and level, and the privacy characteristics.

Why don't politicians care about this?

▲chiengineer3 16 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I have heard enough send 18 billion to Israel

▲thatsabadlook a minute ago | parent | prev [-]

They don't care because of several reasons. 1. They get paid not to 2. They are told not to.

Alot of this spying ends up producing valuable data for different agencies to purchase which otherwise they cannot legally obtain without a warrant. Sure some of it has some commercial value, but a lot of it is probably more valuable for domestic spy operations.

▲MisterMunchkin 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Remember guys, if they are reading it for wrongthink, they are reading it for industrial espionage.

Anthropic and openAI just announced they’re spinning out competitors to their biggest customers… right after ingesting all of their IP and contracts. Do the math.

(Or don’t, because they’ve been caught stealing math research)

▲red75prime an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> because they’ve been caught stealing math research

No. They haven't been caught stealing. Tristan Buckmaster publicly expressed surprise that the OpenAI model has used the niche approach he pursued (with AI assistance). 10,000 agents exploring various approaches make it much less surprising.

▲ihrimech 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Interesting. Could you share a link to this announce?

▲ballooney 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Announcement

▲tintor 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This looks very bad on OpenAI.

What is next? Power and water company suspending your account if your home and car are not streaming enough telemetry.

I am glad that open models are closing on frontier.

▲technion 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Claude is absurdly sensitive to anything that touches cyber, and threatens bans if it gets a whiff of a pentest going on. it wouldnt surprise me if openai had a similar approach.

Yesterday I joked that claude gave me a cyber stop for asking how to make the anime girl video for an exploit, but it was a thing that happened. Meanwhile im trying to convince people around me that having grok nudify people isnt "fine" just because grok says it is. Its wild where the lines a drawn.

▲LoganDark 28 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I'm in the new CVP, and even Mythos gave me a cyber stop just for creating an MCP server that can remotely connect to my Steam Frame to run commands. It must've thought I was trying to create a centralized malware or something.

Not even sure why Mythos even still exists when it's identical to Fable in every way, including refusing to do stuff that looks like it could ever be repurposed into unapproved use cases.

▲jasomill an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Tastelessness aside, this seems perfectly rational to me. Unlike reverse engineering for the purpose of developing security exploits, "nudification" doesn't meaningfully expand the capabilities of malicious actors with access to free online porn and Photoshop.

▲AnneTrotter an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Actually violating one person is fine, but doing anything associated with a specific industry that has applications for harm and help is not?

That's like saying it's fine to beat someone up and take their lunch, but it's not fine to learn how locks work.

▲diogocp 25 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's fine to imagine what your lunch looks like, even if that makes you feel that your dietary privacy has been violated.

▲breakingcups an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

That's one of the weirdest takes on here in a while.

I can develop security exploits myself just fine without the use of AI. Many people don't have the capability to use Photoshop and free online porn to deepfake someone else they might or might not personally know into a realistic video...

▲tosti an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bad on OpenAI? The account got suspended.

This reflects horribly bad on Samsung!

▲fdw an hour ago | parent [-]

The headline is misleading, but the "article" is only five screenshots of Twitter posts. Someone used AI to decrypt the Samsung TV's firmware and found always on listening, classification, lots of privacy nightmares. Then their (the hacker's, not Samsung's) OpenAI got suspended for "Cyber Abuse".

▲tosti an hour ago | parent [-]

Right, but still: OpenAI provided a service and it's up to them to determine acceptable use. Samsung sells a $3000 (or actually $2999,95) TV and you get big brother watching you.

▲alfiedotwtf 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

With Kimi K3.1 Pro, today WAS the day they actually caught up.

I’ve been saying this for the past few months - once the inflection point happens (such as today), it’s only a matter of 2 years when American closed models won’t be able to catch up with Chinese open models

▲alanfranz 2 hours ago | parent [-]

… IF chinese models stay open.

▲3abiton 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is again will be very funny race to watch. Right now you can fairly do lots of reverse enginnering or "hacking" with off the shelf Chinese models, and they are very capable (GLM3 for example) which can be run locally if you stomach the hardware. Tools like rea are also becoming more popular. If openai continues to be pedantic, they will lose the technical base given how close is the gap getting.

▲kmac_ 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The company I work for has a plan B to switch to alternative, self-hosted models if providers pull off strange moves, such as drastic pricing changes. We have already switched from one provider to another once, and we do not want to get burned again. We do not reverse engineer, just regular development.

▲pluc an hour ago | parent [-]

Until Kevin quits and you need to modify his work

▲Roark66 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Have you tried Qwen3.8-Flash-Next? I found it significantly better in anything I tested than GLM5.3-Flash, but the thing is you either use Alibaba cloud or you host it yourself (no lesser quant than unsloth 4.5 or mx4/nvfp4 and kv no more quantized than int8).

▲nicce 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

It is great if you have enough RAM. I have enough to run it, but not enough for prefix cache. 27b is so much faster with long term tasks.

▲figmert 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For the past few days I've been trying to use rea to reverse engineer my Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro to get seamless functionality working outside of the Samsung ecosystem with no luck (the buds 4 pro require Samsung devices + a Samsung account for seamless to work, I only have a Galaxy phone + my macbook). I think we're still far away from having something that works that well.

▲Geof25 6 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Claude Code for coding and DeepSeek + opencode for reverse engineering at this point.

DeepSeek will break the binary into code and Claude will search for problems. Now you have most of exploitation chain.

▲luma 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Dog bark and baby crying detection are advertised features for SmartThings integrations. Door bell and door knocking are also included, this is surfaced directly if you hook the TV or sound bar into SmartThings.

▲pawelduda 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I had to check this and it's true. Not saying Samsung or 3rd parties don't take advantage of any data they can collect, but the story the tweets tell is super biased against them. Here, the detection seems limited to specific pattens required for a particular feature.

▲ada-h00k 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If OpenAI really banned him for that reason, that would be pretty stupid. If you can no longer use an LLM for reverse engineering without worrying about your account, that drastically reduces its value.

▲spockz 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In my efforts to reverse engineer the LG firmware to validate Gamers Nexus claims, I got a warning very quickly. I appealed that quickly and successfully.

Then I applied for daybreak blue and haven’t had any issues since.

It also a matter of phrasing. Say what you want to achieve not how if it is approaching defensive or cyber stuff.

Also state you are working on your own devices and software. (If that is the case of course.)

▲papascrubs an hour ago | parent [-]

Was this through a personal subscription? Last I looked into daybreak access, if required an organization based account.

▲spockz 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

Yes a personal subscription. Individuals can also request it. only blue for defensive questions. Red for offensive is gated to organisations that are proven to be using it for protecting.

https://chatgpt.com/cyber

▲williamdclt 22 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> If you can no longer use an LLM for reverse engineering without worrying about your account, that drastically reduces its value

...for a niche of customers, from whom the revenue is probably entirely negligible to OpenAI.

Not saying it's right, ethical or anything like that, but it's not "stupid"

▲antirez an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"Why you bother about local AI? LOL with the $ you spend for <insert hardware here> you can buy 5 years of 20x account". Yeah. 5 years where you are told what you can do.

▲tkel 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

from his twitter account:

> if your samsung TV model doesnt have a microphone, it will look for connected devices with one, such as a soundbar or a connected bluetooth device. this gets shipped off to bixby.

▲throwa356262 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Is this not the expected function when you use bixby?

(Not saying people should use bixby mind you)

▲zkmon 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just don't buy any tech home appliance that was made after 2022.

▲Hugsun 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm curious if someone has started cataloging these cases. These spying TVs seem like a common industry practice.

▲jeeva 4 hours ago | parent [-]

I believe GamersNexus were talking about doing more exhaustive testing across different brands after their video on LG models specifically.

▲VorpalWay 2 hours ago | parent [-]

A video on vulnerabilities in Asus routers was released yesterday: https://youtube.com/watch?v=kYnwCx2SNYY

But if you are talking TVs specifically, I expect they will get back to that too.

▲hurfdurf 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

https://mrbruh.com/asusrouter/

  If you avoided downloading the app for whatever reason, you can be proud because it just saved you from potentially getting hacked.
Nice.
▲nickdothutton an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is why you buy a display panel and not a smart TV.

▲aussieguy1234 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The AI in the TV was listening for dogs barking and babys crying, a gross invasion of privacy. Possibly this could have been for ad targeting purposes.

With projects like REA, it's going to get harder and harder for companies to get away with things like this.

I'd love to see the major social media apps reverse engineered and analyzed in this way. I can only imagine the dodgy practices that'll be found if this happens.

▲kjsingh 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

so is the hardware mic-off button on Samsung TV any good?

▲akmarinov 32 minutes ago | parent [-]

If we read the tweet - the TV then connects to whatever device it can like a home theater, other speakers and uses its microphone if it has one

▲anthk an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No libre agents and LLM's?

▲Den_VR 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The tile references on-board ai. “On-board ai” here is automatic content recognition. Imagine my disappointment

▲pprotas 3 hours ago | parent [-]

AI is simply an if/else statement in disguise, you didn’t know that?

▲znpy 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

so glad i bought a dumb tv.

i remember going store to store in search of one.

gg me, that was a smart move.

▲midtake 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What a load of shit. Samsung TV always listening if you enable listening, why would they do this? /s

How dare they run a classifier locally on the TV, they should upload it uncut to Czechia like Amazon did with their ring cameras!

▲freecodeio 21 minutes ago | parent [-]

the point is the setting does nothing, now go back to your claude session