Yet another Hacker News

Hacker reverses Samsung TV, finds on-board AI listening OpenAI account suspended

130 points testing22321 4 hours ago 23 comments

ada-h00k 2 hours ago | parent

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 44 minutes ago | parent

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.)

tintor 2 hours ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

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.

alfiedotwtf 40 minutes ago | parent

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 15 minutes ago | parent

… IF chinese models stay open.

3abiton 2 hours ago | parent

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_ 1 hour ago | parent

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.

figmert 56 minutes ago | parent

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.

Hugsun 2 hours ago | parent

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

jeeva 1 hour ago | parent

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

VorpalWay 14 minutes 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.

tkel 1 hour ago | parent

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 1 hour ago | parent

Is this not the expected function when you use bixby?

(Not saying people should use bixby mind you)

luma 1 hour ago | parent

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 33 minutes 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.

Den_VR 1 hour ago | parent

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

pprotas 1 hour ago | parent

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

znpy 1 hour ago | parent

so glad i bought a dumb tv.

i remember going store to store in search of one.

gg me, that was a smart move.

kjsingh 1 hour ago | parent

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

MisterMunchkin 1 hour ago | parent

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)

ihrimech 18 minutes ago | parent

Interesting. Could you share a link to this announce?

ballooney 6 minutes ago | parent

Announcement