Linus Boycotts Anker After Security Disaster
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ค. 2024
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0:00 Intro
0:20 Linus Boycotts Anker After Security Nightmare
4:36 Half of computer repair run by creeps?
7:57 Researchers crash botnet accidentally
10:00 PCBWay
10:39 Outro
Sources:
arstechnica.com/?p=1900883
9to5mac.com/2021/05/17/huge-e...
arstechnica.com/?p=1899664
www.zdnet.com/article/worried...
• Taking your computer t...
arxiv.org/pdf/2211.05824.pdf
www.bleepingcomputer.com/news...
www.akamai.com/blog/security-...
www.akamai.com/blog/security-...
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That security researcher is an absolute saint. He is what makes me proud of my field. That's amazing work he did exposing the spyware.
Not discounting Paul's work on highlighting the issue, and some of the fancier details he and others found... but the fact that it was there with F12 is enough to get anyone interested, and yet they aren't even a brand new product.
Only 'smart' device i have is a marantz network receiver, and first thing i did was was hook it up via ICS and ran wireshark on it while scanning it, only weird activity was it used port 5001 to check for firmware updates, that port is usually a chess server :D
Spyware is a bit too harsh for a stupidly written software written by dumb engineers and a marketing team who ignore about how their product works.
@@NopWorks it takes pictures of you using facial recognition, and sends those pictures to their servers. Their advertising claims that they never take your data and that all videos and picture are store locally. They lied, and they spy.
@@Sumguysazz i liked your comment, TH-cam didn't. It got shadow banned. You're right though, the company works with the CCP to enforce the uyghur camps.
@@NopWorks And what is the proper name for people like you that are in complete denial of the most basic facts?
I used to work for SanDisk doing physical data recovery on SD cards / flash drives. You wouldn't believe the amount of "that" kind of stuff I was exposed to, since you know.... It was kinda part of my job to verify the files after recovery, naturally I had to view a few images / check thumbnails as part of the internal verification process. Some people would send in entire devices that ONLY contained that sort of stuff.... **shudder**
What stuff?
@@O1OO1O1 n00dz =P
It is absolutely necessary for data recovery to look at the data. When reconstructing/mixing/XORing/interleaving sectors, you have to verify that the data actually works, and it's not just a recovery program seeing spurious JFIF file headers.
Now I'd recommend to remove any important data from a device that you bring in for repair, but that might not always be possible, in particular not with devices where NAND/SSD is directly soldered on, or where getting access to the hard drive isn't possible for the layman.
"YOUR PRIVACY IS OUR PRIORITY"
You can add custom CSS / Javascript right here.
😂
Now this job offer I can't reject until 1 year later.
How to apply? XD
My Step Dad started the company Bug Doctor in 1990. He build new computers, and serviced peoples' computers, as well as networking. I asked him why he never hired new members, and he told me it's extremely hard to hire people you can trust.
I just realised that if I ever need CCTV, I'm going to be really privileged to be able to cobble stuff together like a Raspberry Pi camera system... Seems that absolutely no vendor is safe.
Edit: Unfortunately I'll lose the fav from Seytonic by editing this but I have to say this. Stop replying giving some crap inaccurate advice on how to lock down a CCTV system or whatever would be better to use or complain about how privileged I am to have a Raspberry Pi. Your advice doesn't apply at all from what I've read; the point was how I'm advantaged compared to the average consumer who has no idea how to make such a system and who has no means of determining which one is safe, and I've got an old Raspberry Pi 2B lying around that's out of a job since I got a rack server. And to the guy ranting about OnlyFans and "queens" for some reason: Just shut it, please.
I think I'll do that, to be completely honest. I've got cams but they're crap
Motioneye
Raspberry Pi's are incredibly vulnerable to opportunistic attacks.
Weak or improper configuration (Eg: SSH, default password / Ports) can allow bad-actors access to an entire network-feed.
Hardening is required on ANY Pi project with a live camera-stream, but the options are often limited due to the performance deficit.
It is much better to setup a wired system that records to a central database.
The great thing about the Pi Project is the open source nature. Just make sure the project has actually been audited before personal/local deployment.
You can look in to Ubiquiti. it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. But it does allow you to keep it fully local after first setup. So no network required since all storage is local
@@malthehansen7915 what you described is certainly not exclusive to PIs, and honestly I'd trust a non-standard system I set up myself more than one of those that thousands of people who know nothing about security have installed in their homes. If those have a vulnerability, attackers will know how to exploit it. If my Pi has one, most opportunistic attackers wouldn't even know how to handle it, since most people don't use Pis for that purpose, so it's going to be an unexpected system.
It's a little security thru obscurity, but most people's threat model is the average burglar who would AT BEST only know how to disable mainstream security, not some weird non-standard stuff like a Pi set up without any wireless capabilities unlocked, just wires leading to an internal server somewhere.
And this is why I insisted on commercial grade security cameras that don't require a connection to the internet. _Every internet connected consumer product will attempt to monetize your privacy, no matter their claims to the contrary._ Mine have no gateway assigned and have sent no traffic out that I've seen. More expensive, but I've actually got control of them.
or just dont buy anything privacy related from CHAINA
What do you buy. I have been searching for AGES for some decent camera equipment which doesnt have any IoT functionality but no luck
@@MrPaxio ironic since setting something so basic could only came from Chinese camera and parts. There's almost no basic component products marketed in US and EU. A couple that do would almost guarantee double the price for similar specs out of Chinese supplier.
@@MrPaxio ...or the United States of America.
IT guy here: I frequently check browsing history on machines that are suddenly behaving strangely or whose owners have recently had accounts compromised. Finding the source of an issue (bogus driver, bad customer support site, fake login page, etc) is helpful not only for repair, but to show users what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.
Also IT guy here... Seems unorthadox having to look into the browsing history for that, especially if it's just driver issues. Unless the customer signed a waiver allowing you to do that, the very first thing you would do is to run an antivirus and of course optionally back up prior if there's sensitive data on the drive.
@@0x1EGEN audio suddenly not working is not always a driver issue, it's usually either hardware or a user doing something dumb. Retracing their steps to see if they did a dumb is efficient and can be used to show the user how to avoid issues in the future. Process takes a minute or two and can give great insight into the source of the problem.
@Jceggbert5 Also just asking them what they did wrong would need them to understand what went wrong in the first place. So just asking the customer doesnt really help at all. And some customers suddenly develop short term amnesia for dumb stuff they did..
Right? It's not like all of the solutions are in one place all the time, you have to investigate to some degree
Now I remember the time like 12 years ago I downloaded a virus from the internet and the IT dude asked me what site I went to which gave my PC a rootkit virus 🤭. If my parent took the laptop before I was able to have an over the phone diag done he prob would've done what was asked on the phone
@@jceggbert5 it's like going to the doctor with a std and they start calling your sexual partners to let you know which one of them to avoid in the future. Your job is to repair the thing, don't overthink it.
Massive respect to Linus for being so principled. Anker is a long time prolific sponsor and he dropped them instantly.
Yeah I was ready to call BS on Linus but this is really bad. And the company could obviously have been pressured to do it by their government, which would mean they will never fix it
Linus cares about the people and what the people become exposed to by their influence
Linus is a business man, but he’s a principled, consumer-first type of businessman (as opposed to shareholder first or revenue first). So he won’t do anything, or associate with anyone that negatively affects his consumer base.
He did the same to nvidia
He's only principled until the company buys an ad spot from him. And then he magically forgets all wrongdoings.
My cousin got a gaming computer built from a local repair shop and PC store. They actually didn't even give him a real Windows key and were using an illegal activation service despite making him pay for an actual key. They turned off Windows updates and security features so that the activation would work as well, all shady.
Honestly just report them to Microsoft, licensing in the tech world is a huge thing.
@@blau.specht hahahahahaha, you seriously think that? When's the last time you heard of them (microsoft) doing anything at all to enforce their license? The days of the BSA and don't copy that floppy tattling rewards are long over. Microsoft lost that war to the rampant piracy of china and russia.
I've bought off the shelf Windows copies that had already had the key used - and when I got in touch with MS to fix my key, guess what the tech used to try and remediate it?
Not sure why turning off updates would make activation work. Smells like bullshit to me.
Hell, report them for fraud;
You paid for something, they didn't deliver, but actively tried to scam you. Thats textbook fraud.
You should be entitled to a full refund, or at the very least, the value of a real Windows key.
Last time I brought a laptop to a repair shop, they claimed they "uninstalled malware" while they fixed it.
The fans were broken, so actually booting into windows wasn't really necessary.
Anyways, the "malware" they uninstalled was my mouse drivers. And I think some open-source program I was using at the time.
This is why you always take your hardrive out when bringing PCs to repair.
@@Aura_Mancer yeah, honestly I'd have to do that nowdays because with LUKS full disk encryption turned on, I really don't trust smaller repair shops to not say they "fixed" my computer by wiping my entire OS and any data on it.
@@BurnerWah i'm sure you could sue them for such damages
Mouse drivers can actually have malware, but you are right they never should have needed to scan for it unless it was blatant while stress-testing (yes booting windows is technically relevant, that said most fan repairs I wouldn't need to load it to know the fan was spinning ok) Most decent IT guys are too busy to look at other ppl's files, I have sometimes had something like malware jump out at me (BTW malware can cause actual damage running the fans etc flat-out) In which case the customer should get a phone call about it. Often when repairing ppls er um 'photos' jump out at you... you try to close it pretend you didn't see to avoid embarrassment (lost customer/return business) But TBH you wouldn't believe...
Did they replace the fans though? 🤔
He isn't alone. I was going to buy a few Eufy cams until I heard about the undocumented cloud storage. And then I heard the update and it gets absolutely worse!
Yup I was about to drop a couple K to fully cover my place, and after the initial announcement I put it on pause to see if they reacted acceptably. Which to me would be contracting a known third party cyber security company to fully audit their systems to lock it down. Then put their systems up for pen testing with bounties. If they did that I'd happily still throw money at them
But they went the complete opposite direction, hell they basically didn't even go into damage control mode.
I worked at the large US chain repair shop, just bought by an an insurance company in the past years. We asked for a password login, password removal or a guest account if they were ok with us checking the laptop after the repair. We had a fair share of times we logged in, especially on Macs since they save the previous state, and the web browser is open to p0rn or their nuudz folders are open. One girl left her iMessage open with her explicit photos. On some of those devices there wasn’t any problems with the device, it’s like some of these people had a get caught by the IT dept fetish. Of course it doesn’t excuse anyone to go exploring some more and save stuff. We’d normally just admire the view for a bit and then close all the stuff and try to get the device back out
right, "caught by the IT dept" with a n00dz folder in the desktop XD
just sigh and change the default browser back to Chrome.
@@endless2239 why chrome though
@@endless2239 hardened firefox is better
I'd presume it's a case of, the researchers observed this fault in their testing environment, then realising bot nets are intended to work en mass, and likely implement peer-to-peer coordination, that if they sent the malformed command out to the live network, it'd propagate across its entirety, crashing each of its nodes as they attempted to execute the command...
they probably just crashed the main server, which then subsequently crashed every bot
@@comet.x From the info in the video from the article, I got the impression that the _malware_ crashed, when sent a malformed command, from the control server it is _listening_ to, and the aspect of the malware which the researchers edited, was the IP the malware was listening to as it's control server...
The last story reminds me of my first web server from when I was learning to code, where I was expecting to receive json and when someone sent me a blank message my server crashed.
I was a local Macintosh repair technician for 6 years. I will say that there were times we cloned a hard drive before a repair as a preventative measure, in case we screwed something up during the repair. Especially during software repairs. It made sense because we were usually repairing 10-20 computers at a time and would boot to an external drive and clone the internal while we were finishing up another repair. Sometimes with odd issues it was easier to see if the problem was truly hardware or software, by booting the clone off a known good computer to see if the problem could be reproduced. We didn't normally mention it to the customer because it was just another part of the troubleshooting process, and we always wiped the drive.
As far as stealing pictures or other documents, I never witnessed or participated in intentionally copying and saving someone elses data. Did we ever see revealing photos? yes, it was unavoidable, especially with data recovery because pictures are high priority. There were several people (male and female) that had revealing pics of themselves as their own wallpaper.
I can't believe anyone would be dumb enough to txt photos to themselves from someone else's phone though. That's pathetic.
and if you're peeping through a customer personal stuff, you probably have too much time, get another job.
@@endless2239 Work time doesn't quite work that way. It is extremely rare to be in such work place that would just allow you to switch doing work for a job outside of the company if you get any slack time between assignments.
@@anteshell that's not what I meant, but ok I guess?
@@endless2239 you said "another" which means a second job. And what I said is accurate whether or not you meant how I interpreted it. This kind of job is not "hands full 100% of the work time" type of job. Very few jobs are like that with no slack time at all. There is a lot of waiting for things to happen and the amount of slack time depends a lot on the amount of active work orders.
But regardless of all that, there it is still not possible to do a second job during that as the schedule is impossible to arrange in such way.
@@anteshell he was saying stop wasting time scrolling threw customers shit but you knew that by get another job he meant stop doing the first job but you knew that lol
And that's why if I'm giving a computer to repair to someone, I take out the hardrive. They have tools to boot something and do stuff. If they deny this, I go somewhere else. If it's RMA, I move everything and wipe it out.
that is the only way it should be done. sadly most ppl dont even think about their privacy could be exploited like that and dont take measures.
That only applies if the hardware is at fault, if the fault is software or combination of software-hardware you are out of luck.
Hell, once it was just a faulty hard drive causing issues, we just cloned it to a new one and cleaned windows install + drivers.
I keep my hard drive encrypted so they can't even get through the bootloader.
That’s sadly not possible anymore in many laptops with soldered storage :/.
I go so far as to dump stock images of any new device I acquire, and burn them back to the device if possible before RMA. If I can't get a stock image easily, the device goes back anyway. Somehow I've ended up with an army of pi clones.
One time a family member got a laptop repaired, it was dropped and the hinge on the left side wasn’t working. Not only did they not repair the hinge, but they dropped the laptop again, and proceeded to glue the keyboard back into place. This was a local repair shop.
Oof, reminds me of the time I severely damaged the case of a desktop while disassembling due to me rushing through it. Took full responsibility for that huge mistake, repaired the damage as best as I could and was transparent with the customer about what had happened. The customer was a farmer who was gonna use it to manage some old software so he did not care as long as it was functioning
I learn from my mistakes lesson is: don't rush even if there are multiple computers that needs to be worked on.
Hearing that repair shop data is literally sickening. Being a fairly new only couple year old electronics/mobile phone repair shop I wouldn't even imagine doing half of the crap that's in that list. But then again I'm a one-man show and when something goes wrong customers only have to deal with me and I take full accountability for anything that happens.
Always fixed my own computers and have had to fix friends and family every now and then and this is really disturbing. If I knew this stat I could've gotten way more business!
dealing with customers compared to dealing with family are way different experiences
@@evilgibson It's about as awful, except customers usually give you money for using your time to fix their stuff.
@@MarktheRude If I had to fix a family member's PC you *bet* I'm giving them my PayPal and saying "Hey, maybe pay or I won't give the PC" or beter yet,
ASK THEM TO PAY UPFRONT
@@WohaoG either your time is really valuable or you arent kind to your family, as i would never ask money for helping family.
@@poplix2704 My time is really valuable as a person who usually sleeps at 2AM due to work
Being the person who made 90% of the Anker Wikipedia page, I appreciate you using it. Much love. 😄
P.S. I was an Anker fan for the longest time and I’ve bought from all their product categories except for eufy and roav, glad I didn’t. But I’m sad that I can no longer trust this brand I’ve grown to love for 6 years.
I would not really say that the eufy incompetence extends to everything Anker
@@tomasxfrancoObviously eufy incompetence doesn’t imply incompetence throughout Anker, but it DOES at least introduce doubt in their overall competency which could lead to incompetence in other areas
I just bought an anker 4 port usb hub, now I’m worried that I should return it? Any thoughts?
@@IAmLeutrimTopalli you will be fine
@@IAmLeutrimTopalli what are you worried about with a damn USB hub. What? The hub taking all your USB drive data and sending it to China? Lol.
I would ALWAYS back up the customers device if it only had 2 storage devices or less. I was very upfront about it and had a mini tower set up for it. I would record the overall room and over my shoulder so they could see what I accessed and could see that I deleted the virtual machine with the backed up data.
Granted I wasn't changing a speaker, usually desoldering the flash memory to put it on a working motherboard or doing stuff on an unstable laptop that could lose or corrupt data for an accountant.
Honestly, I just didn't want to deal with a ton of work when I could just use a drive imaging program with a file browser and if something went wrong, my fault or not, I could quickly start over.
you should still ask or at least notify the customer about what you do first tho
@@JustPlayerDE i do, i just didn't put in every little step. I was just covering how I document for them EXACTLY what I did and that no hardware changes rooms once I start.
Added: I did say I was upfront about making sure they know in my post. If they didn't agree, I would recommend a tech who would do it without backing up that I trusted. He also sent me some business.
I started with computers in the 70s. I've learned to be paranoid over the course of years. I've been given Alexa crap as a gift before and handed it back lol Security cameras are nice but you should know what you are getting into. The bulk of consumers do not understand the risks that come with technology. We need better laws to protect those consumers.
Laws have a habit of backfiring and being used in unforeseen and undesirable ways. I honestly don't believe the problem here is only with the technology or the services exploiting it. I believe the bigger problem here is the people themselves who use those services. Anecdotal, but I've tried to explain security issues related to "technologies of convenience" to many people many times and the depressingly disappointing responses I hear over and over again are "so what?" and "I already know, but don't care". Try explaining to a teenager that TikTok is literally Chinese spyware creating a vast database of every public detail available of them and all of their friends and 99 times out of 100 they'll simply roll their eyes and keep using the service, but will still loudly complain about being negatively affected by it when the day of reckoning finally comes. Most people are addicted to their phones, to social media and to the convenience some of those products provide regardless of potential consequence. A person of low intellect (i.e. most people) will simply refuse to care until it affects them directly. Although some may suffer consequences due to their own actions, I believe it's foolish and degenerative to the evolution of humanity to constantly create news laws which essentially exist to protect dumb people from themselves as it only teaches them that they don't need to ever face any consequences for their choices. The average IQ across the planet is in the low 80s; Changing the world to suit the average fool will only hurt us all in the long run. The real problem with technology is that we made it idiot proof and accessible to the average low IQ consumer. We should have stuck to the command line and kept the GUI locked in a vault of possibilities until such a point that humanity had become intellectually capable of using it responsibly and phones should have stayed dumb forever.
@@pbjandahighfive you know, the IQ actually measures how much deviation from the average you have, so, the average is 100
@@pi4795 Literally incorrect. The MEAN score of the IQ test itself is 100 with a standard deviation of 15, but that does not mean that the average person has an IQ of 100. MEAN =/= AVERAGE. In this case it means the average person will have an IQ between 85 and 115. The AVERAGE IQ SCORE for the human population across all continents is in the low 80s because while the AVERAGE person has a score between 85 and 115, for the rest of the scores outside of the MEAN DISTRIBUTION there are more scores BELOW 85 than ABOVE 115. Educate yourself before trying to educate others next time.
@@pi4795 Yeah I knew you wouldn't reply after being thoroughly slapped with reality.
@@pbjandahighfive not only the mean, but the median and the mode of the IQ was at least designed to be 100. But maybe is not the case anymore (or never was worldwide?) Good to know
This is your reminder that everytime an app is involved your privacy goes out the window
*Especially* on Android. (And I say this as an Android "Fanboy")
Me; Installs any app.
App; "Yeeaaahhh, so I'm gonna need access to any and every service on your phone, your personal bank account, and your DNA"
@@The_Keeper Apple does it too.
Hell, they are datamining your phone while you have all that shit turned off
The Eufy story was absolutely horrific but the botnet network crashed by a typo was hilarious and my personal favorite drink this video 😂🤣
I work at a repair shop, and also own one on the other side of town.
If I ever caught any of my coworkers, colleagues or employees looking into client data which wasn't pertinent to the repair task... I'd not only fire them, but I'd also press charges against them in advanced of the client likely doing the same to me after I informed them. Because regardless of how little business sense it would make to inform them, it makes perfectly good human being sense.
I agree with you.
what charges would apply under such circumstances?
@@mito88 I'd have to ask my lawyer. Though, their employment contracts explicitly state that doing such things would be a breach of our terms. So, at the very least... breach of contract. Which while merely a civil issue, would perhaps help mitigate the money I'd be forced to pay out to the victim. To some small degree.
But, I'd press for more serious charges.
I love my employees though, and none of them would ever do this. So, I don't really have to worry about it. :)
No you wouldn't. If you caught em with nudes sure, but ar eyou going to fire a guy for opening My Documents?
Nah, you're not. Stop chest beating.
This is a regular occurrence with such devices. My college’s cybersecurity wing had a room completely filled with such devices just to drill the point home & for extra credit to find the vulnerabilities.
It is cheaper to develop products without caring about security so they outcompete everything else until there is no other option. Really basic mistakes throughout that anyone with any amount of expertise in a related field would never make.
The Repair shop story doesn't surprise me at all.
Look at when Gary Glitter brought his computer to PC World. It's always stuck with me, how, even a massive company like that will still have a look through your porn before giving the computer back.
Because it's a person looking at your computer... No matter what company you go to, you'll likely have at least one person like that, even with the best hiring practices it would be hard to filter out everyone and it's not as if there's a special breed of person who fixes computers but refuses to look at porn or other material on somebody's PC and only the "good" stores like Apple hires them.
@@vgamesx1 I dunno. It sort of feels like there should be a level of privacy and respect there.
Like I get people have urges but it's like, I should still expect that I can leave my nan at the funeral home, without having to think what they've done to her, you know?
There should probably be some oversight if you don't think you can trust your staff.
@@carrotman There should be a level of privacy there, but humans will do human things. As for oversight, I doubt these people are jumping into their customers porn the day they get hired. People can't be watched 24/7. It sucks, but I wouldn't trust anyone to fix my PC. Ill pull hdd out or just buy a new one before letting a stranger touch mine.
@@carrotman There should, but unfortunately in the world we live in, you have to look out for yourself, if you ran a shop, then how do you spot at a glance the difference between someone doing work and someone goofing around messing with people's stuff.
You can't watch somebody 24/7, that'd be a waste of your time, which you should be using to fix your own queue and even if you did somewhat keep an eye on them, it's unlikely they'll do it to every single PC that lands on their desk.
The best thing you can do is find a shop that you're fairly certain you CAN trust and as others said if you're unsure, then the next best thing is to pull any drives or lock the device and maybe go as far as the reporter to set up device monitoring.
@@vgamesx1 Yes. Practically, I do just remove drives whenever my PC has a Booboo too big for me.
But it's still weird we've just accepted that, hey, IT guys are pervs and will invade your privacy for fun, no biggie.
I mean. Is it impossible to check?
Well, no.
Even if they used a 'Secret shoppers' technique and used the monitoring software like in this video, you'd be able to know if some of your workers did this at least the PC handed in.
But like, they don't even do that. Because everyone's just chill with it....
Its a shame, I have had a great deal of respect for Anker, they make great battery units. Now I have to wonder.
You mean batteries spying on us ? :0
@@DrumToTheBassWoop We already have USB-C *CABLES* that can contain malware. It really would not surprise me that the controller on the battery charger can be compromised.
@@kennethng8346 for fuck sake...
Is there nothing I can get a minutes peace from spying. 😑
I got one of your older WiFi deauthers and I had to reflash the firmware, but you only had the bin file for your newer WiFi deauther with USB-C.. It somewhat works with the older deauther but I can't get the beacons to work properly, I haven't tried deauthing. Can you put the older firmware on your website for legacy devices? I'm assuming its different.
I'm still going to use Anker batteries and cords...those are secure
Until for some reason they do a BadUSB.
You're essentially rolling over and letting Anker know you don't care how bad they screw up as long as it doesn't affect you, you'll still give them your money.
I'm not buying another Anker product, period, because of this. They can get fcked
I’m gonna still use their stuff. I’m not buying anymore though
I mean, I would still be sus about it
@@lillywho Would they then explain how it's actually a feature and that they'll make sure to detect when you're away from the computer in the next batch? :)
Sounds like "dude trust me bro" found out
were looking for this xD
If I remember correctly ufy had a breach some time ago where you could see other people's cameras or something like that
Yup! I covered it a while back. For people interested: www.theverge.com/2021/5/19/22444164/eufy-security-camera-glitch-privacy-feed-exposed-statement-details
Amazing video as always. Informative... Thx and keep up the work
Thanks my dude :)
@@Seytonic sir, anything to say about wickr getting turned off on december?
I'm shocked that 50% of computer repair shops don't snoop.
I have run into repair shops who have been dubious. I took a 2nd hand laptop in for a screen replacement and asked them to replace the screen for me. I wasted over 2 weeks of them not even bothering to repair the laptop at all. When I went in to ask for a screen replacement, they told me it would probably take a couple days to get a new one in, so I waited 2-3 days later went back into the store and asked them _"Is it fixed and ready yet?"_ to which they replied no and said they were still trying to get the screen replacement in. And this repeated over the course of several days until I decided _"Fuck it, I'll take it back and do it myself."_ So went in the following day after and demanded they just return the laptop since they're not even going to bother repairing it, and that I'll be warning everyone to not come to this repair shop. It took me 2 days to get a new laptop screen replacement in and the job took me less than an hour to fix, something this repair shop was clearly unable to do.
The only reasonable explanation I can think of for crashing the whole botnet is that the C2 was behind Akamai CDN and they can easily respond to clear text C2 communications. Just change the reverse proxy on the CDN to a server you own and respond with a message that crashed the bot.
I worked for a Staples store in the tech department for quite a while. I saw quite a few questionable 'behind the scenes' "best practices" over the years
In the early 2000s, I worked for the Best Buy in my town (in the US), in PC sales. This was before "Geek Squad" had been rolled out, it was just "the tech bay" then. Every night after close, they would put on music, or play comedy videos... all sourced from customers' machines. Remember though: early naughts, MP3, and there really was no video streaming.
I'm actually amazed this is just being addressed now. I thought this wasn't a secret. (Also, I was in SALES, and I frowned on this behavior. It also taught me to never trust repair shops with my data.)
Wow
The repair shop thing sucks.
I used to work for a PC repair shop. We never did anything creepy to customers. We had one client that had explicit self portraits on her laptop that I saw back when I was a new employee there. It was the first and only time that happened. It was awkward, so I was very careful for the rest of my repair career. I’d squint my eyes to only see blurry color, and if anything skin colored showed up on file thumbnails, I’d just block it with my hands. Swap the view to details, and do my job from there.
I can’t stress enough how awkward it was seeing a person after seeing their personal photos.
For further details, the folder was not labeled. I was trying to look for recently downloaded .exe files that looked suspect. I was new… didn’t even think of looking through the logs… which would’ve saved me from being really uncomfortable
I worked on a helpdesk and repair company. Most of my colleagues wouldn't go snooping, but if there was something alarming that was very obvious it had to be reported. This happened far too much.
I worked at geeksquad once and the manager there said to copy the user files regardless of reason computer was brought in. There was literally a drawer with dozens on dozens of 512 SanDisk drives. I was disgusted that I left on spot and reported them to police. After that they had a sign saying that they only deal with returns and not repairs anymore.
I worked at a small chain of repair shops for a couple months (owner just sucked at management) and I hardly ever needed to look at random data, the most I would do outside of the normal repair or diag was to pull up a TH-cam video just as a test and to make sure there wasn't any other issues. I think the pro tip here is to store your nudes on passed protected folders or to back them up elsewhere before giving it to a repair shop.
If you’re wondering why the entire botnet was likely taken down, it is because the researcher is assuming that the bots weren’t expecting a case where they couldn’t reach the server and likely also crashed.
If the bots don’t have a way to reconnect to the server written into their code, you would have to reinfect each server from scratch.
That doesn’t explain how they can update the code of all the infected machines.
@@Skidday Yeah, they have changed the C&C server address in order to send out syntax error command.
@@Skidday they had the code they could have easily taken the original c2's address and sent the malformed command.
I read the blog post and it seems like they weren’t the ones that caused the crash- the threat actors themselves were after they forgot a space in a command. They just captured the malformed command coming through and were able to replicate it on their own captured instance and spoofed C2.
@@Padgriffin This makes way more sense than the original take. Thanks for the update.
If reading the url crashes the bot because of syntax error, then how would it communicate anything to other bots? The syntax error crashed it, which would make it stop working instantly. (Could possibly be something leading to that and it communicates something idk)
The only time I've gone into a repair shop they switched out my joy sticks for trashed ones. I was pissed off, forgot to take a picture before hand, and they brushed it off as not true because I had no proof. I repair everything myself now that is reasonably possible with my limited skill set.
Before leaving your phone for service you obviously must remove the SD card and shut down your phone. All phones are encrypted when opening it up again and require the pin to decrypt the content. The problem would be if the decryption keys were public or easily accessible.
Yeah so what about the new iPhones with no sd card ….
I guess shutting down the phone still applies
@@giorgosterzakis3286 What if there's no pin? And no, a lot of regular people don't even know they can set a pin so that point is moot.
Bro wtf are you even saying this is a cyber security news channel
seems like the only secure cameras are custom ones set up with raspberry pi's though they shouldn't connect to the internet anyway as that defeats the purpose really
since they're called *closed circuit* television cameras
as for the repair shops, it would be interesting to see this test take place in other regions or countries
Yes on the cameras. I also feel like LTT should be more rigorous in evaluating these privacy and security claims. Given their platform, they ought to have the expertise to really in investigate privacy and security claims. Otherwise, they are just reading stuff from the box and website and serving it back to users.
@@jamesregovich5244 i agree, given how they've bought a lab for testing, I see no reason to not do it
People like to see them with there phones cc cameras are remotely viewed by bosses to check on employees as common practices now a days
@@jamesregovich5244 ltt isn't responsible for shitty people they didn't contract with eufy they contracted with anker who owns 30 companys and they don't test door cameras yet
@@ImInSpainWithoutTheS you spend money testing shit then they don't test door cameras yet maybe they will but they don't have to test every product asker sub companies make bec you believe they should
There is a small chance that those who copied files were doing so as part of their standard practice in case something went horribly wrong during a hardware replacement if they thought it was a hardware issue on the laptop, however, at some point when you know it's not actually a hardware issue that's just plain creepy.
Love these videos, really concise and short.
So about repair shops, my gf was gulible enough to send her laptop to one and the guy installed a free anti-virus for 150$ :)
He managed to make her believe that formatting the hard drive would do nothing and only a profesionnal could do that, so I went to the shop to retrieve her computer, refusing to pay because this is basically a scam and I can do the repairs on my own (which I've been doing since I'm 16, so I think I'm pretty qualified for that).
I'm glad LTT also covered this stuff, as many of their audience wouldn't see it otherwise. That said, it's also unfortunate some in the chat still don't see the issue. I liked Anker, but also don't want to buy anything from them now.
whats to keep a shop from pulling the drive and cloning it? other than if the drive is soldered to the motherboard.
of course couldnt they boot into linux and clone the drive there?
You completely missed the difference between their doorbell and their cameras.
The option to display the camera in VLC is an option available in almost every camera system (RTSP)
Thank you for sharing the story about Anker. I will include them in my blacklist brand.
If you're worried about a repair shop going through your data, learn to use something like TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt, etc. to create encrypted directories/virtual drives on your computer, and store your sensitive data in there. You won't be able to hide everything (i.e., browsing history) just by doing this, but it should be enough for anything truly sensitive. Although, you may be most concerned about passwords saved in your browser, which can be viewed in plaintext by anyone with physical access to your device.
If you know about, and use, VeraCrypt you can probably fix things yourself. Any average person will not be able to do this at all.
@@Amplificator very true, most repair shops are rip-offs either way by asking a ton of money for a small job.
didn't know steps recorder even existed, maybe you could make a compilation of such tools, would be neat
Of those 8 shops apparently in the clear, how many pulled the hard disc and imaged it?
damn I'm glad I saw this--I was literally about to buy home security stuff and I really trust anker.
Something else to think about for the repair shop problem. Each of these places likely opened these folders to see what (if any) data was in those folders. So they could potentially just reinstall windows and get it working again. Due to never knowing what exactly is going on with a PC and what a user might have done you have to assume the worst. So peeking at this data isnt unheard of. I know when people bring me stuff to work on I will open the folders to see if reloading windows is a viable option. As soon as I see data I know that its not likely to be an option. There are a few other things to think about with these results as well but more than what just a simple comment on youtube is going to be good for posting.
It would have worked but also, if folders exist, you don't have to go in, look at files, copy them to external storage, in order to know that they probably don't want you deleting the folder.
If I brought my laptop to get my speakers fixed and the guy totally wiped it, that would be a bad thing. Even if it was relatively new.
@@carrotman The idea isnt to just wipe and not tell the user. Its to tell the viability of a wipe. If you see files then you know you cant even try a wipe and its going to be alot of work. If its clean then you can talk to the user and tell them a wipe might fix the issue. Its all about the next steps and knowing what your getting yourself into before opening your mouth on a problem.
agreed, I also sometimes do look for "bank statement.exe" in the documents folder, then you know something may be compromised.
another usual is to go through a lot of jpg thumbnails, I have discovered many faulty drivers and ram problems that way.
HOWEVER, browser history peeping? no excuse.
Except you don't know where the user saved their files. Simply looking in the documents folder or pictures folder and seeing them being empty, is no indication that no other data is stored anywhere else on the drive. It's not as simple as that, and if you do what you suggest you'll eventually end up destroying data for sure.
@@Amplificator Most users who are non-technical have a high chance of storing data in these places. So its a good bet. However, this is a simple check to see if its even viable. Not to just do it. If you read the other reply you would know that this is simple a quick check to understand how receptive the user will be to asking about a wipe. If they have ages of data stuffed into the machine then its probably not going to be viable. But if they have just a few things saved then they are going to likely be more receiptive to the idea of wiping the system. No one is saying to do anything without user's permission.
So, what is a good security camera provider that actually does only store locally because I'm about to consider installing zoneminder manually on my local server and running the whole thing myself.
@PPGP News I agree with the last sentence. I used to have a security camera, but then we got rid of it since we’re so bland no one would want to sneak in our house anyway. Same for the camera provider, they have nothing to see. I’m just a bland person with no girlfriend so they don’t even get the chance to record hot-blooded action every night. So yeah, highly relatable.
I thought eufy was just using the tuya developer options to create the smart side of their device. Either way I’d assume the rstp stream is not secure ar all and only uses a basic username password combo ( admin:password for example)
Also a lot of what Eufy does is needed for functionality. What needs to happen is customers need to be given a choice whether they want such features or not.
They *specifically* advertise their products as "No Cloud". That doesn't mean, "well, we run Cloud data *unencrypted* in the background. Oh, and we run your personal data in plain-text."
Nah man, this is either malice or stupidity, not lack of informing the consumer.
Remember, this is enough of a GDPR violation that its bad enough to most likely make Eufy banned in the EU.
One time back in like 2002 when I was a sales engineer one of the sales reps was having a problem with her PowerPoint. She asked me to take a look. She was trying to put images in a PPT and they wouldn't load, I said "is this pictures folder safe to look in" and she says smiling "well ya". Before that I worked for a VAR so I had worked on plenty of machines and knew full well to avoid any personal folders... Anyways, I open her folder and shocker, it's full of pics of her hooking up... I skip right past all the pics, get her stuff working, and all I said was "You shouldn't store your personal stuff on a work laptop" and left it at that. From then on I tried to avoid being partnered up with her for sales calls because she was obviously trying to add me to her collection lol
Can we talk about Yong Chen (as seen in the header) calling himself Yong Gates in that email? 😂
The ankermake m5 has ai image recognition do you thing this will also get stored in the cloud?
The api needs to be encrypted, and any information they store needs to be hashed. Configuring these things are not that hard. On the other hand, you would be hard pressed to find any IOT device that takes any basic security measures.
funny thing is, this probably applies to "security" devices like cameras and stuff as well. most people would be better of using a custom setup, but most people also don't know how to do that
@Lord_Vertice I agree. My only thing with DIY solutions is that you aren't going to find the most effective hardware for it on a budget. You can make an IP camera with a single board computer like raspberry pi, however the camera you can get for them isn't very good for something like security footage. When it comes to security, you get what you pay for. The currency is either your money or the work and knowledge you put into it.
this is why the majority of software should be open source
6:41 I hope they just put pic of spagetti and other pasta in the "noods" folder 😂😂
A lot of shops will do a “tune-up” of some sort on every machine that comes through that includes clearing all log files as they are deemed “clutter” that can somehow slow the computer. Many of the techs legitimately believe this is important.
Lol ive never taken my phone or computer for repairs. I always tell people, so whats stopping that repair shop installing malware on your phone or snooping around your device? People are ridiculous with who they trust.
Take out your SSD for any physical issue
Do you repair your own things then? You just sound paranoid. I don't take my devices to shops because I just do it myself for cheaper, and typically with better results anyway.
What is stopping a mechanic shop from cutting your brakes? Or a supermarket from injecting poison into the products? Are you going to grow your own food? If you apply your logic to other things you seemingly can't trust anyone or anything. It's a flawed way of thinking. And if you only apply your logic to this one single area, then you have a strong bias for some reason.
@@Amplificator I guess the reasoning behind it is that with something like computer repair, it's harder to prove. Cutting the brakes is easily provable because you can physically see the brakes are cut, and the fact that the car won't stop. Installing some sort of malware that deletes itself once it's harvested all your files is significantly harder to prove, for example
I'm not saying the guy is being reasonable in his assumptions, but if that's the logic he's basing it off of it makes a little bit of sense
@@Gatorz_Gaming sure, ill just take the 'ssd' out of my cellphone. Clown
What Anker mean is that they don't upload to WESTERN cloud servers
what would ya recommend though. i sometimes see these battery banks for half cost but eh since my anker thats like 3-5 plus yrs old at this point still work it def makes me hesitant to switch.
Ive just found your channel and watched the last 10 videos your content is great, i dont realy subscribe to much people but this is very interesting thanks for the content and keep up!
I used to work for a local family run computer repair shop.
You don't get paid well and there is a LOT of downtime while you wait for loading bars. So I'll just be honest and say that we would look through people's stuff out of sheer boredom and also some tools we had for transferring account data (back in the day) would reveal banking details, although we never dared used them because we weren't that stupid. Mostly we just took people's pirated movies and TV because the internet was slower back then. We also knew techs working for other repair shops who did such things too, so it's just a matter of fact that your stuff will get looked at.
still doesn't make it ok :)
"Boredom" doesn't justify anything. I don't look through peoples drawers if I'm at someone's house and I'm bored. Bring yourself a ball to bounce off the wall, a book, a crossword, etc. Don't breach people's privacy because you're bored.
🤢🤢🤮 I hope that business goes under ASAP
Okay do you know how to prevent it in user level?
@@Redwan777 if you want your computer fixed, no
These creepy repairshops need to be shut down.
I'm unfamiliar with windows audit logs, I'll say that off rip. I'm curious if checking for the presence of the audit log is an event that would be captured, I also wonder if this is something that a tech would check ( I know I wouldn't have). Point being, the potential mishandling of data might be higher than reported if the drive was accessed externally or from a live OS on boot.
No it wouldn't be.
Turning off the driver manually would be though.
If a repair shop wanted to look in my noodz directory, I say have at it. They'll just find pictures of noodles, some cooked, some still in the box.
I mostly like Linus & LTT, but sometimes his massive ego just rubs me the wrong way. "You heard it here first, we're done with Anker." Like he just put them out of business or something, because he graced Paul Moore's work with a mention on his channel.
It's either you lack understanding or you're just a pure hater. As a tech and privacy activist, what is he expected to do? Ride them up like you're obviously doing??? 🤦🏾♂️
He trades on his credibility, whenever a product is featured the LTT community basically crashes the website. He doesn't need to keep shady companies around because there's always another waiting and they know people trust their judgement.
Nah, he's just saying he cut ties with them... Like, yeah he's overdramatizing, but that's just yt
He’s pretty much the largest tech channel and it’s not that he’s saying that he’ll put them out of business but instead he’s speaking on behalf of his own company of ltt, “we’re done with anker” we’re not him telling his audience to do anything himself but referring to the company.
He knows that stopping ads with ankor won’t personally affect him, but other channels would be likely to also drop them as a sponsor, which will lead to a large drop in sales in a very competitive market.
He's a tit.
I guess some people need folks like him?
I'm petsonally happier doing my own research.
Watching Linus announce that look like it hurt him, FU to Eufy but Anker seem cool
is the kmsbotnet the one that activates office??
I saw this setting on my Samsung tablet called "maintenance mode." I have never had to get a device repaired , thankfully, but after seeing this video, I'm strongly considering using that setting if I ever do.
And its 13 secs ago !!!
Me too. :-)
You are 9 minutes ago for me
I have screenshot to prove it. Also only 4 views at that point. ;-)
But yes, I was watching a bit and only later looking at the comments and saw the 13 sec. one.
When I worked in a repair shop, the first thing my colleague did when fixing a phone was going through photos and coping girl's nudes to his collection. He had gigabytes of this stuff. He also saved their names and phone numbers. He had dates with some of the girls later on. Everyone in the shop knew this and other nobody cared.
Wtf dude why didn't you tell management
About the botnet crashing. They changed the server IP to their local IP, they sent the command to their LOCAL CLIENT. There is no reason why all the infected clients should have gotten the command, only the client they own got it.
The researchers tried to make a big deal out of something small, the article doesnt really make sense in that matter. I call cap
I remember an article in PCPro magazine or similar years ago where they did a similar study of repair shops in the UK… IIRC it was way more than half that were dodgy.
I feel potentially the researchers that were looking at the botnet might have sent the malformed command to the actual botnet but omitted that part due to potential legal repercussions?
if the VM had internet access, the command could easily have escaped.
The study of computer repair shops does present a pretty obvious way to deal with the problem. Just make this kind of testing standardized just like how food health agencies go around regularly testing restaurants. Just do these kinds of test every so often, probably at more or less random intervals and the create a score card based on it that the store is required to post in a visible location.
Would you mind using dark reader extension for your next videos? I care about my sight, Thanks. 😃
For copying customer data, it is a standard practice throughout the field to create a backup of the device before any work is done to it. I'm about to finish up a CSS degree, and this process has been pushed in most of my classes.
1:49 I just love that below the ai_face_id and face_url the code simply says "is_stranger: 0"
Idk why, but that naming just cracked me up 😆
The study cannot detect if the drive was removed then placed in another pc and the noodz folder copied. Nor if it was say booted from a linux flash drive then the noodz folder was copied
You did Nehru place dirty in intro when you talked about creep and mobile repair store. 🤣
I always reset my electronics to factory settings when I bring them in for repair. Once I didn't when I got my phone's battery changed but I didn't give the technician the code and I waited until the repair was done.
from what you reported in that study, the data scientists can't detect whether they simply pulled the hard drive and cloned it first before servicing the computer. if their methodology is flawed, it could havd been higher than 50 percent of shops - maybe 100 percent of their shops.
why pull the driver when you can use a Linux live USB, I carry on me everyday.
Why did you Use that Specific Picture
about Laptop Repair Shop ? 😅
It doesn’t look like a Stock Photo and
you Can See the Address Clearly. I
thought the Story was linked to the Shop.
I like how we were both confused by the same thing but talking about it made it clear
Huh, my laptop has been feeling a little faster than normal.... Thanks Akamai 👍
Why was the camera allowed outbound connections?
I was done with Anker before that, my first battery was an Anker, just received it used it to charge my phone in that moment and it worked. After a week I realised I need to charge my external battery and when I did it got stuck in loop, did not get any replacement.
“Canadian computer scientists came up with a Simple Plan” is perhaps an unintentional pun, but I love it
I had no idea what the pun was, so I asked ChatGPT... Is this correct?
In this case, the pun is using the name of the Canadian band "Simple Plan" and the word "simple" to create a humorous statement about Canadian computer scientists. The joke is that the computer scientists have come up with a plan that is both easy to understand (simple) and also coincidentally shares a name with the band.
This is such a heartbreak. I have always liked anker products a lot. And I used to recommend them to my customers. Alas. Another icon bites the dust