WEBVTT

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subscription streaming services are getting to the point where they cost as

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much as a cable subscription used to I mean it's no wonder people are setting

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sale for the streaming seas that is

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where this morally ambiguous plastic box comes in it can be had for about the

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price of a family outing to McDonald's and Promises to provide cheap or even

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free access to copyrighted content for anyone no technical skills required I

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mean there must be a catch right oh now

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that's a yikes desktop echo's discovery of a pre-installed back door on the t95

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made us wonder is it a one-off or does it impact the plethora of similar

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Android boxes available on Amazon AliExpress and nearly every other Online

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Marketplace to find out we bought a

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whole stack of them and as it turns out the t95 is back door is only the tip of

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the iceberg so then are any of these

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things worth buying or do they all need to go straight to the landfill like I'm

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going to go straight to this segue to our sponsor I fix it is your battery not

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lasting as long as it used to looking for a new project I fix it has you

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covered stay tuned to the end of the video to learn more about their battery

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replacement kits legally questionable set top boxes are nothing new way back

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in 2009 I talked about the popcorn hour c200 whose big party trick was the

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ability to stream from Torrance rather than waiting for them to finish

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downloading there's a big market for this kind of stuff stuff and as part of

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the Napster generation I may or may not have dabbled myself at some point no

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judgment however it's important to remember that the kinds of folks who are

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willing to help you circumvent copyright law tend to be the same kinds of folks

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who don't care about other laws either like privacy or data collection laws to

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which you might think come on lus how bad could it be let's have a look

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booting up any one of these boxes you're going to be greeted with a friendly

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setup process and brought to a home screen that looks at least vaguely like

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Android TV if you're running a pie hole like desktop Echo was this might be the

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point where you start to see red flags in what seems to be a best case scenario

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the Box might be trying to Ping an address with fota in the URL fota stands

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for firmware over the air and is relatively standard Android Behavior

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what isn't relatively standard is that if you look up the IP that URL is going

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to point to a place that at least someone refers to as China now this

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isn't a problem in and of itself but with China's looser regulations

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especially with respect to foreign Nationals it means that there are no

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guarantees that the firmware that you download will be clean or that it will

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even be firmware at all in a much worst scenario your experience will mimic

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desktop Echoes who found countless attempts to contact URLs that were made

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up of jumbled letters and lesser used top level domains that were attempting

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to dump payloads into the now notorious core Java directory

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this matters because this directory appears to be a relative of CopyCat an

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Android malware with truly terrifying capabilities the original infected an

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estimated 14 million devices and was designed primarily to generate and steal

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ad Revenue but given that it can root your device inject itself alongside apps

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that you launch and control your network activity it can be used for all kinds of

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Nefarious activities coming back to our

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devices then when inspecting their file systems using Android debug Bridge we

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found almost half of them had the same core Java folder and open preferences

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file even if they didn't immediately try to access any questionable URLs another

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one had the core Java folder though it was empty as if the firmware image that

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they used contained the same malware at some point but it was removed did they

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have a change of heart did they accidentally break the malware's functionality or did they remove it to

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install something worse we don't know another possibility is that it's a

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Remnant from borrowing someone else's homework there's evidence that at least

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half of the units that we bought use modified versions of Android that

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started off their lives as Android for Google pixel phones one such image calls

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itself big Droid OS the lack of Google

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results for big Droid seems to indicate that it exists only for use on Android

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set toop boxes and could even be an internally developed Fork at a

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manufacturer of these devices now we did find big Droid OS installed on three

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different box boxes that seem to come from different manufacturers but all

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three of them share the same all- winner s so model and the same specs and also

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we have no way to confirm that they actually came from different places at

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least not without flying to China to track the factories down in person which

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is a lot of time and expense for a throwaway Scooby-Doo reveal bit and

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besides it doesn't really matter because we've seen enough at this point to say

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definitively that you shouldn't plug any of these things into your home network

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at least not without precautions I mean what if we could meddle with the box and

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prevent the malware from getting away with whatever it's trying to do could we

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make any of these into useful devices most of them do have 4 gigs of RAM the

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ability to Output in 4k Bluetooth Wi-Fi

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well that's a tough one blocking the bad

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behavior that we know about won't protect us against the unknown and

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there's a lot that we don't know most of these came pre-rooted with alternative

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app store and a rebranded version of Cody that does not Inspire confidence

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they could easily contain payloads that Target other devices on your local

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network or persistent malware that steals login credentials and no amount

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of monitoring is enough to say for sure that everything has been found and

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eliminated a back door on the system for example could lay dormant for months or

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even years only to awaken when a bad actor needs your zombie device to join a

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large dos attack or something like that now One op option would be to find a

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clean ROM and install it in place of the stock operating system I mean they are

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rooted devices after all but unfortunately our attempts at this were

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frustrating at best and downright impossible at worst it seems like all

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the resellers that offer flashable firmware images are content hosting the

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files on Mega Dropbox or one drive so if

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those files expire they either don't notice or they don't care and when you

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do find a ROM and you figure out how to flash it on to your device odds are good

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that you will end up right back where you started core Java folder and all oh

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and also I mean if you bought this thing for the pirated content that's not going

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to survive a clean Android installation anyway there does seem to be one project

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going to make custom firmware for Android set toop boxes but it only works

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if they have mlogic S so's and certain streaming apps are going to be very

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limited in functionality if they work at all but hey you might say they're still

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able to do 4K right right no aside from lagging super badly

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this image is clearly not 4K and when we

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went in with ADB and checked the screen size being reported by the system all of

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these boxes were either stuck at 1080P or even 720p which is hilarious cuz this

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one says 8K not even 4K so do they have

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any redeeming qualities are they lying about what's inside the box as well yeah

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even though this advertises 4 gigs of RAM even though Android reports 4 gigs

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of RAM and even though the chips on the board appear to be for a 4 gig set with

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a searchable part number and everything it's not 4 gigs only half of that will

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ever be usable and the system properties seem to corroborate that this probably

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explains why the text on these Micron

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memory chips looks so faded as though it was cheaply printed at the factory this

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issue is not just limited to Android TV boxes either as some car stereo's

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running Android apparently also have the fake RAM problem which means that these

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and those are all essentially manufactured e-waist unless you know

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your way around Android very well and can get a clean image onto yours there

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is nothing to guarantee that it won't eventually engage in elicit activities

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on your network or try to steal your Google login so for just about anyone

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it's not worth the risk especially when these things cost about the same as a

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chomecast with Google TV even the 4K model in some cases I mean sure that's

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not a perfect device either internal storage is limited to 8 gigs a new power

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Bri and dongle is required to add USB or micro SD support and it only has 2 gigs

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of RAM but come on at least it's not Trojan horsing its way into your living

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room to live across the coffee table from your stylish LTT Store.com throw

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pillows if you want something more powerful the NVIDIA Shield is definitely

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that offering up 1080p to 4K upscaling regular software updates and the ability

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to act as a media server though it does come at a significantly higher price

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both of these Alternatives can run Cod without too much issue if that's what

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you're into both are capable of 4K but

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for real and most importantly both come free of malware we're going to have

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links in the description below if you want to pick up one of those back to

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these then streaming services can be really expensive setting up and tweaking

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reliable trusted devices can be frustrating especially if it's for an

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elderly or less tech-savvy relative and

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I'm not going to stand here and tell you to Pirate or not to Pirate I'm just

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going to tell you to practice safe Computing and this ain't it what this is

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is a segue to our sponsor iix it iFix it

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fix kits for your devices today if you like this video maybe check out our

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Roundup of dash cams the Android TV boxes of the car