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from the we-control-the-horizontal,-we-control-the-vertical dept.
It took a year from proof of concept to in-the-wild attack, but ransomware for Android-based smart TVs is now here. As one victim discovered this Christmas, figuring out how to clean such an infection can be quite difficult.
Ransomware for Android phones has already been around for several years and security experts have warned in the past that it's only a matter of time until such malicious programs start affecting smart TVs, especially since some of them also run Android.
[...] Kansas-based software developer Darren Cauthon reported on Twitter on Dec. 25 that a family member accidentally infected his Android-based TV with ransomware after downloading a movie-watching app. The picture shared by Cauthon showed the TV screen with an FBI-themed ransom message.
[...] Eventually LG provided Cauthon with a solution that involved pressing and releasing two physical buttons on the TV in a particular order. This booted the TV, which runs the now defunct Android-based Google TV platform, into a recovery mode.
The Register also has additional details on the recovery method:
With the TV powered off, place one finger on the settings symbol then another finger on the channel down symbol. Remove finger from settings, then from channel down, and navigate using volume keys to the wipe data/ factory reset option. ®
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 04 2017, @10:45PM
Thanks for the laptop link-- and as to the options you mentioend, I am pursing exactly that. It's an HP that I have, and I recently purchased a new CPU and new video module. There is a 1920x1200 screen available for it, but when I last looked the prices exceeded that of a new laptop. I didn't look recently but I probably should (as long as I am going to open it up and do surgery to replace the CPU and GPU).
The "new" CPU was $25 and the video module was $40; this will let me have the highest end CPU in the laptop model line and a faster GPU than was officially available for it. The GPU is compatible via still having the same socket type and bios whitelisting due to the vendor ID being the same, apparently -- other modules that may fit may not be whitelisted (BIOS whitelisting is horrible).
I am hoping to swap the panel some day; at least when I do I'll have a video module that can drive it (provided that it doesn't arrive SMASHED like that last China epacket delivery I had... so much for saving money by bypassing the stateside reseller on ebay..)
As to the 4K monitor prices, yes I just bought a viewsonic that is working out very well for me. I had previously had a 2560x1440 "shimian" South Korean monitor; the 4k was about $500 give or take $50 and shipping; the Shimian when new was a 0 dead pixel variety for $380 or so.
The prices for 4K are in some cases cheaper than an excellent quality 1920x1200. Perhaps I am just nostalgic; however there is no denying the productivity one can get out of having a big screen. Laptops with less than 1680:1050 just seem like toys. I can't imagine how anyone can push spreadsheets and read emails on a 1366x768 screen on anything beyond Windows 7 -- the defaults over the past 3 or 4 years have been to take up more space and be much less informationally dense. Really going backwards and the greater resolutions are proving to provide the same screen real estate that I had back on XP. I've never even had a 1920x1080 monitor; I can't compare that with anything I have but I imagine it is only marginally better than 1680x1050.
When most of your job is reading... getting DVD playback optimization sized screens for devices that don't even come with a DVD player anymore is not the ideal outcome.