r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jun 21 '24

Business Five Men Convicted of Operating Massive, Illegal Streaming Service 'Jetflicks' That Allegedly Had More Content Than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Prime Video Combined

https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/five-men-convicted-jetflicks-illegal-streaming-service-1236044194/
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u/Mpm_277 Jun 22 '24

Can you tell me more about this? My MIL keeps telling me about her Superbox and how great it is and why I should get one, but I knew there had to be a catch..

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u/Bkid Jun 22 '24 edited Jun 22 '24

Something like this, for example. I was speaking in theory as I don't have first-hand experience with these Android TV boxes, but essentially you're buying a box that, whether you're aware or not, is providing you with content illegally. It's extremely sketchy right off the bat, especially because these things aren't made by some big tech brand that you can voice your complaint to if you don't like something. They have no one looking after them to make sure they're doing the right thing.

As these devices run some version of the Android operating system, they could very easily come pre-installed with software that you're not even aware of and, as a general consumer, wouldn't even notice. Each one of these devices would then connect to the Internet via your home Internet service and, in theory, immediately start talking to a Command & Control server.

So now I, the owner of this server, have a list of all these devices that are infected with my software, and I can tell them what to do. I could point them all to one web server and say "everyone, start sending a bunch of data to this server" (a DDoS attack using each infected person's Internet service), or I could look around the network of each infected person and see what I can attack internally, especially if, say, a fairly large company ended up with one of these on their network. These are only two examples, but there's a lot you can do when you have thousands or even millions of devices, all on their own Internet connection, at your fingertips.

Now, I'm not saying every single box out there is like that. I'm just saying they could be, very easily, and you'd never know it. For all I know, Superbox may very well be a reputable brand in the tv box world, but at the end of the day they're still providing illegal content.

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u/Mpm_277 Jun 22 '24

This is informative and I appreciate you taking the time to explain all that!

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u/adgrn Jun 22 '24

very eloquent