This is so much worse that the title makes it out to be:
1. Your OS installs malware (technically manufacturers software) from a 3rd party vendor in background, zero user interaction
2. Happens as soon as you or anyone with physical access plug in a device into the HDMI port
3. That malware has internet and full system access, no sandboxing
4. It starts with every system boot
5. This software gets installed when you plug in a new LG monitor
6. OR ALREADY HAD AN OLDER LG MONITOR PLUGGED IN, BECAUSE LG APPARENTLY ROLLED THIS OUT FOR MANY OLDER MODELS TOO!!
7. And yes, if you think that's horrendous, as mentioned in the video below, that also applies to 'Professional' LG monitors!
This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
>This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
Printer, mouse, tablet and display tablet makers use this to insert their crapware since at least Windows Vista or Windows 7, I think. The last one I remember is plugging a Razer mouse just to watch it instantly pulling 1.5GB of bloated junk with "telemetry" exfiltrating the data from my gaming PC in realtime. At least it doesn't leave my mouse in a non-working state when I disconnect the internet, like it used to. Thanks, Razer!
Microsoft is to blame here, really. They have a mechanism to block any vendor (supposedly to avoid reputational risks to their brand due to buggy drivers, at least that was their excuse back in the day), but aren't even using it to block these contraptions. Entire businesses are built on this, e.g. Razer is probably more of a marketing/data company now rather than a hardware shop.
Back in my Window days. I would start the driver installation and let it sit. Open the temp folder and copy content the install extracted to a new directory. Cancel the installation. Open Device Manager and install the drivers from there so non of the excessive bloat was installed.
This worked greater with being an IT consultant. The client's machine to run smoother and drivers installed fast since they would buy multiples of the same equipment at once.
Now I only use Linux on personal equipment. You have to pay me to use Microsoft products. Microsoft has become shit-ware.
To be fair Microsoft was always shitware. I don’t remember a time when using a Windows machine just worked, didn’t take up gigabytes of space, didn’t crash, and didn’t get messed up by simply using it requiring a yearly or semi-yearly reinstall.
And yeah, there was some pretty neat stuff. Of Linux, macOS and Windows, Windows was the first to get GPU crash recovery, just chugging onward after a stall instead of bringing the entire system down.
The biggest sign for me that Microsoft just doesn't care about Windows (aside from the ads stuffed everywhere after a fresh install) is they stopped caring about its bones. Where is Windows' equivalent of APFS / BTRFS (or even EXT4)..? NTFS is more than 20 years old by now.
> Where is Windows' equivalent of APFS / BTRFS (or even EXT4)..? NTFS is more than 20 years old by now.
There's ReFS, but a lot of NTFS features are basically baked into the filesystem API, so replacing it is hard.
That being said, NTFS works extremely well and reliable. I don't really see a compelling need to replace it (which is always a messy transition unless you're completely backwards-compatible -- but in that case, NTFS has evolved a lot already).
APFS and BTRFS are objectively better than NTFS. Hell, even HFS+ and EXT4 already were.
And then there is already the next generation knocking on the door. BcacheFS is really cool and yet another step forward in performance and reliability.
Nothing stopping you from enjoying Slackware 11 on EXT2 though :)
Well ackchyually... Windows 3.1 was just a window manager, you needed another 3 disks for DOS, and if you wanted that sweet networking support, you'd need Windows for Workgroups 3.11 which was 8 disks!
These eras of Windows had their own dark patterns that were incredibly anti-consumer. No one's lives were improved because they installed the Ask Jeeves toolbar, but people were asked to install it millions and millions of times.
Windows 2000 was incredible. It was so sleek, fast and worked so much better than XP. I'm sure it still required a lot of tinkering compared to a modern OS, but I still miss it.
That happened all the time. My Windows machines, from XP all the way up through early Windows 10, just worked. They didn't crash. And they certainly didn't need to get reinstalled for no reason. Your experience, while unfortunate, is not remotely typical.
"The Halloween documents comprise a series of confidential Microsoft memoranda on potential strategies relating to free software, open-source software, and to Linux in particular, and a series of media responses to these memoranda. "
When .INF was all you needed (and some .cat / sys)!
More recently, I found out that approach can sometimes lead to missing features when using the hardware. Even though the driver is installed correctly. I was probably missing something but didn't dig deeper into it.
> but aren't even using it to block these contraptions
Even worse, this one is installed via Windows update. I have an LG monitor and noticed the stupid LG app all of the sudden, uninstalled it, and saw it pop up again as an update in Windows update.
I don't understand how this is legal. Isn't this malware? Isn't it illegal to install malware on someone's computer without their permission? Or is this very illegal, but nobody cares about that anymore?
There have been courts that have voided unreasonable EULAs, I believe. I suspect this can be fought too. But getting actual meaningful consequences for the manufacturers to make them stop doing this, may be a different matter.
When individuals test the boundaries of the law, they go to jail or get fined to bankruptcy. When corporations test the boundaries of the law they get to try again next year. There need to be consequences for even trying to impose bad faith contracts.
The definition of malware was twisted by the tech giants to exclude their spying practices. Spyware is only spyware if it is not made or blessed by Microsoft, Google or Apple.
"Isn't it illegal to install malware on someone's computer without their permission?"
Yeah but you almost certainly granted permission to allow updates from our "Partners" when you installed windows. How did you miss clause III of romanette 2 in the 6th paragraph right in front of your face on page 26 of the ToS?
It is legal by default. The question is: why isn't it illegal?
Some quick searching suggests this scenario hasn't been tested in the courts. Like most things, you have to take it to the federal courts and establish case law, OR pass a law (good luck).
It shouldn't be allowed. Microsoft shouldn't allow this, but they do, because they like having revenue from business partners.
Microsoft could easily make a rulebook for drivers, and say any company which violates the rulebook can only send open source drivers, or even ban them from driver distribution entirely which would quickly kill a consumer hardware brand.
Microsoft does not care about the quality of Windows. Half the malware comes from them. Windows is just a platform they can sell online services and AI products through.
Yeah but they can only sell online services and AI products through Windows as long as people keep using it. Betting it all on their lock in being strong enough doesn't sound like a good long term strategy.
Oh, yeah. Bought this overpriced but heavily hyped Razer mouse and it wouldn't even work right until it had an internet connection. A MOUSE. I'd never encountered something so blatantly customer hostile in my life. Never even looked at another Razer product, never will, and will tell anyone who will listen that Razer is a terrible company full of objectively terrible people.
I used to pulverize my friends with a Logitech G700 in Quake3/OpenArena. I'm sure it has a newer version.
Razer was never "definitively better". It's merely competitive with other top ones, that's all. Before G700, Logitech even had a mouse with two sensors and was the undisputed king for FPS quite some time.
Logitech is a truly innovative company. They actually care deeply about ergonomics. They also introduced the first mass market application of programmable magnets (in the MX Master mouse scroll wheel) - that's incredibly advanced materials science.
I’m no longer sure about their quality though. Out of four Logitech mice I bought recently (four different models), two died within a year. At least their warranty repair/replace process was decent.
I had several Marathon mice which broke their 3-year battery life promises, by lasting way longer. I had to retire them since their plastics degraded in some cases after 6-7 years (I had several at one point due to having multiple PCs being used every day for long stretches).
Currently I use their MX Keys Minis, MX Anywhere mice and trackballs. All are rock solid. Bolt receiver works great with Linux via Solaar allowing full suite of features.
Oh, Firmware Update Daemon supports Logitech hardware, too. If Logitech sends in new firmware, it pops up instantly to upgrade.
In my family we use the Glorious Model O. My son wanted one ages ago (I got him a mini), and it was so nice, I got one for myself. Now my oldest has a big one, and my youngest uses the mini.
We've had them for years. The mini has lost the button that lets you select speed, but other than that they're still great. For better than the various Logitechs I had before.
The only real downside is the bright flashing led patterns. I've gotten used to them.
Use cats. For all great Logi ergonomics, they fall prey to cat hair; and pads cover the screws, so they can't be reassembled pristine after cleaning. Still, M500s is the best.
Mousereview reddit always recommends looking at Chinese gaming mice, they have reasonable prices, often clone popular mouse shapes from large brands (see [1]) and have the latest sensors.
If you can find an original Glorious [0] Model O, that's a nice piece of hardware. The new Model O looks like it only works with their new, totally garbage Glorious CORE v2 software.
If you never want to change the DPIs, lighting, or button assignments, & etc then you don't need the software... so if what the hardware does out of the box is fine for you, then you don't need to worry about how trash CORE v2 is.
CORE v1 is okay, but still notably worse than the Model O software. I don't know why they farmed out the development of CORE v2 to "the CEO's middle-school nephew who's 'good with computers'", but they did.
[0] ...they were originally called "Glorious PC Gaming Race" (in homage to the Reddit meme), but dropped that last bit from their company name a while back...
I also have a Model I and am unhappy with the fact that -when last I checked- you can't configure the three or four extra buttons so they're actually buttons. Your only option is for them to generate keypresses, or do mouse-management functions -such as "cycle DPI"-.
This is... frustrating. Multi-button HID devices are -arguably- easier to do than something that pretends to be both a mouse and a keyboard. I get that some games may not understand how to deal with mice that have more than four or five mouse buttons, it'd be quite nice if I had the option to set things up so that I can use them as buttons in games that know how to handle them.
80% of a mouse decision should be which form fits best for your hand. Unfortunately for me that's razor mice. (Well, the Viper v2, I dont love the v3 I have now.)
Some Razer mice were somewhat good in the times when the sensor mattered, with the rest of them being absolute garbage (starting with the Copperhead which barely worked). Today there's a ton of niche manufacturers with great internals that will exceed any requirements you might possibly have.
If you're really interested in FPS performance and not just the brand, choose for the ergonomics first, it's not possible to recommend anything without knowing your play style, hand size etc. The shape and weight you like, and complementary feet and mat with the exact static/dynamic friction you need. Then check if the internals are good enough (they likely are) and whether there are any firmware issues like extra jitter on flicks or unavoidable debounce lag, then look at the required software. There's a ton of mice with excellent performance that are configurable without ANY software.
This is unfortunately why I keep buying the Razer Deathadder Pro. It fits my hand perfectly and is super accurate. I hate their software, and the company, but the performance and ergonomics of the mouse are worth it to me.
DA has probably the most widely cloned shape in the market and has many identical or compatible alternatives and clones, check e.g. MCHOSE A7 Ultra RE or Pulsar Xlite v4 Large (never had either so can't vouch for their software)
I got an ASUS Rog Gladius III Wireless with my Asus ROG laptop. Thought it was a 'free' crap but damned. It is so good and lightweight. Has 3 modes: wifi, BT, cord. Now at my house we all have Asus Gladius mouses! There are also cheaper versions with just a cable connection. And they work without installing Asus Crap Software Center.
I'd say any cheap mouse off Amazon that has a pleasing shape is usually good enough, but I've also never ranked above gold in any competitive PvP shooter, so there's that :')
I'm currently using a wireless ProtoArc mouse. Good shape, can adjust DPI on the fly, hasn't broken even after a year. I think it was like 30 bucks maybe?
I know hardly anything about FPS but the reason I like Razer mice is the hardware macros. Configuration profiles are saved to the device and macros are performed at the hardware level. Some actions work with the razer software but most of them don't have to.
You literally need two or three mouse buttons for a FPS game. This argument might have worked if you said MMO because there’s a million abilities you can use but there’s absolutely nothing special about Razer mice when it comes to FPS specifically.
I had a razer mouse and headphones, which from time to time crashed their driver server or whatever and nothing could help until the cold restart of the PC and a laptop. Razer. Never again.
This. Microsoft has chosen to allow this functionality, despite it being a very clear breach of trust with customers.
LG/Dell/et al should be shamed and blamed for even trying this shit in the first place, but it’s Microsoft who holds the blame for allowing such malware and spyware trash through their own update service.
I am saying that people here seem to be appealing to Microsoft as an authority that should be interested in stopping this, perhaps because they are morally superior or concerned about their reputation. They are not.
No, Microsoft should be stopping this because Microsoft is doing it, and it is wrong. HDMI does not, to my knowledge, provide a mechanism for loading code: it's Microsoft software looking the product model up in a Microsoft database, downloading the appropriate malware, and executing it with elevated privileges (bypassing UAC).
No, Microsoft inflicted this upon themselves. They introduced driver vetoing long ago specifically for this purpose (at the cost of certain amount of user freedom), and have established the criteria for it, but barely ever enforce most of these criteria that aren't related to hard OS stability (and sometimes even those that are related), because that might upset the vendors.
The Razer one is spot-on. I had a Razer mouse during the Windows 7 days and it kept running the installation setup despite declining it all the time, and it's so bad at times I recall seeing the setup trigger while on an ongoing Windows update when the screen was already locked up.
Microsoft has been coddling big devs (read: the devs that code this absolute garbage) for decades. They have this mentality "if we change anything, and anything breaks for current users, they're going to blame us instead of the vendor" and that might have been useful in the 95 days, but it's outmoded. They need to have the balls to break every vendor in 2026 if they're doing things they shouldn't.
I don't trust Microsoft not to be a modern capitalist, but I trust the companies they enable even less.
> This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
Microsoft has been allowing this sort of ludicrous behavior for decades at this point, it's not a new issue. What's new is how visible LG made their malware, compared to previous auto-installs that happen like this, where they try to make the thing not so in your face, as they know there will be a huge backlash.
I don't know what Microsoft is thinking even allowing and enabling this sort of thing, they've lost all touch when it comes to building things for users.
If you have been reading the news about Windows 11 then I will enlighten you -- they view the Windows 11 consumer business as a cost center that must be mitigated.
As such, all manner of monetization has been approved and it will continued to be approved without regard for user experience.
This article obviates that this is not an LG problem, it is a Microsoft problem.
Also, don't fool yourself if you think this won't come to the Linux world.
I don't think they are anymore. The vast majority of ordinary person computer/internet use has already moved to smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and other such devices. It seems nowadays many people don't even know the basics about how to use a desktop operating system.
I find this hard to believe considering how bad the UIs are on phones and TVs. Even google.com does not offer feature parity between their desktop and mobile websites.
My phone still didn't come with a functional paint or notepad apps. Google docs is a horrible experience on phones (but at least it works now - a few years ago it was straight up unusable).
And you're telling me that this is the only computing platform for a lot of people? How is everything still so unusable about it then?
My experience tells me that everything mobile is basically an afterthought outside of a few dozen websites and I guess phone games.
> My phone still didn't come with a functional paint or notepad apps [...] And you're telling me that this is the only computing platform for a lot of people? How is everything still so unusable about it then?
Not to sound harsh, but you come at this with an somewhat old perspective, the same one I grew up with too and probably also retain too much of.
People don't open their phones looking for something like paint or notepad apps, they want a messenger/social network to connect with their family/friends which is most likely why they got the phone in the first place, and if they're "advanced", they'll even edit their own photos and images but via a whole host of various phone image editors. Sometimes the social network offers those things too, sometimes as separate apps, people use that sort of stuff instead of looking for "paint.exe" or tools to crop/edit images in a more, I guess "crude" way that you and I might be used to and favor still today.
I don't open my phone for notes or paint either, but sometimes I really need it. And then I am endlessly frustrated that the stuff we do get by default has half-baked functionality.
For example, the gallery app's image editor on my phone doesn't let me cut out a piece from the middle and then let me pull the sides together. Eg if I have a picture of a table and I want to cut out a certain column. This is super easy to do in paint, but on my phone I need to look for extra (ad-riddled) apps for that.
Also, there's no way that phones are mainly for social networks. It's estimated that there are 5.5-6 billion smartphone users.
All that stuff actually works decently well on mobile... as long as one is willing to accept certain compromises.
Note-taking works fine, in Google Keep, Apple Notes, or some other cloud equivalent. Yup, your data is in the cloud and owned by one of those tech megacorps, but most people just don't care.
Basic photo editing works okay too, in Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc. Ditto the cloud stuff.
What really makes most desktop users outliers is caring about, or even being aware at all of the concept of, actually owning your own data versus trusting cloud providers for everything.
Does it work fine though? Because I haven't even heard of Google Keep, let alone have it installed.
If I need to take some notes I can't even imagine going to search through a store to find a note taking application since that should be a built in feature of every consumer OS.
The same goes for Google Photos. And I imagine that Google photos also doesn't let you edit it a column in the middle of a table. It's trivial to do in real life or in MSpaint or any real image editor but somehow exceeds the limits of mobile apps.
My kid was in a ECE program at a top 25 university. About a third of their first year classmates did not know how to navigate a desktop file system. And these are the kids interested in tech. It’s far, far worse for the ones with no interest in tech. Tablets in school have left a generation of kids behind where the previous generation was.
I wonder if this is an American thing, because my nephews regularly use desktops and laptops. Tablets never caught on here though.
I was worried about this when they were younger though. The youngest played a lot of games only on a phone, but even he seems to have moved on from that.
Right. Laptops are basically work (or school) tools now for a lot of people. They might have one tucked away that they pull out now and then when they need it, similar to a power drill or a sewing machine. It’s not a daily use device.
I think it helped Microsoft historically that people used their operating systems at home, although even then a lot of people would have learned Windows at work or school first.
MS owns Typescript and NPM and Azure and LinkedIn. I know you meant programming on Windows, but even if Windows disappears, many of us will owe our job to Microsoft.
Dont forget they own github too. The vast majority of open source software is on there these days.
Yes there are other options: gitlab.com, some project specific gitlab instances (freedesktop for example), forejo / codeberg, and the Linux kernel is off doing it's own thing with mailing lists instead. I even come across code on SourceForge every now and then still. But all of these are super niche.
They own Typescript? I wasn’t aware that they control the organization, but that ought to be easy enough to fork. NPM is a bigger one, but also not too huge. Azure is only used by people who already have Microsoft/Windows buy-in.
They created TypeScript, and maintain it now. It's not exactly a business for them, no one is buying "TypeScript Enterprise" subscriptions. It's all under the Apache License 2.0 and certainly big enough that if they started pulling anything untoward, it would see a fork. Sometimes Microsoft produces an unalloyed good, they're not a monolith.
> They own Typescript? I wasn’t aware that they control the organization,
I genuinely don't know, got curious and went to typescriptlang.org to find some "About" page or "Governance" or something else, but couldn't find anything at all about it. It was exclusively developed by Microsoft for two years, and with no other clear governance/decision structure today as far as I can see, doesn't that exactly mean that Microsoft controls the entire "organization"? It's not clear what "organization" you're referring to either, the GitHub organization? I'd assume that's also 100% Microsoft controlled.
>This is not coming to the Linux world. The moment this sort of thing happens, distros get forked.
I installed Debian 13 recently. The first time I opened Firefox ESR (installed by default), I got something that looked like adverts on the home page (banner blindness means I have no memory of what they actually were, only of the feeling of disgust). The Home section of the Settings page had options for "Sponsored shortcuts" and "Sponsored stories" enabled by default. Changing a default setting is a lot easier than forking software, yet it was not done.
No, it's also on Debian for not disabling/removing that crap. Shielding the user from crapware (both the accidental and intentional kind) is the entire reason distribution maintainers exist in the first place.
As long as you have a computer that can run unsigned software, or software signed by yourself, this won't come to Linux as non-optional features: you can always recompile your kernel removing things you do not want like this.
A "minimal" Ubuntu 24.04 install is <quickly does df -h on a fresh install> around 2GB, so I'm not sure what you posted is correct or maybe just a typo.
> don't fool yourself if you think this won't come to the Linux world.
I'm curious what you mean by this. I'm not necessarily rejecting the point, but I also don't see how this could happen without substantial shifts in the industry first.
Yeah, curious here too. Torvalds would need to pass first I think, and I just don't see other major players like RedHat, Google, Canonical, or Valve introducing this themselves or agreeing to do it in aggregate. And as end users we could still fork and patch it out. Some shitty company might try but I don't think it would stand.
Lots of bad ideas have come to Linux, like non-consensual telemetry, mobile-first interfaces etc. Don’t believe? Run OpenSnitch.
Traditional CADT means features get lost over time.
It is not immune from these forces, just not a focus by the powers that be. Fewer developers remember the good old days of Y2Kas as well, meaning they don’t resist these forces instinctively, since they grew up in iOS captivity.
Telemetry is anything including a process list. If you're talking about eBPF it's also used for debugging and server fleets and recently in basic task managers. Any data can be used to take a magnifying glass to the system. The kernel has literally thousands of toggles for this from networking to threading. And yes a program can see what your kernel supports and yes it can refuse to run if you're not running a specific kernel with a specific feature. How do you think programs like open snitch even work?
I think literally the only driver I’ve installed for any accessory of any kind is the config utility for a Stream Deck. I certainly never install mouse (thank you Steermouse!) or printer drivers, let alone a monitor driver of all things.
>I don't know what Microsoft is thinking even allowing and enabling this sort of thing
This has been a feature since Windows 7, and it worked great since it would pull all necessary drivers after installation without you going hunting on the internet like in the Windows XP days.
Just that no HW manufacturer thought to push spyware in their driver repos at that point to improve some team's KPIs.
>and it worked great since it would pull all necessary drivers after installation without you going hunting on the internet like in the Windows XP days.
A driver shouldn't be a front-facing program that shows ads of any kind. It should be sandboxed and follow strict APIs to talk to the OS and that's it - any extra options should be shown inline in the main e.g. printer or mouse dialog.
And then what, ever single gaming mouse/keyboard config is going to appear in the Windows UI dialog? I think extra options in an app is fine, but you should have to download it. At which point who knows what you’ve opened yourself to but at least you chose to do it.
> And then what, ever single gaming mouse/keyboard config is going to appear in the Windows UI dialog?
Actually, why not? The driver could declare a list/tree of extra configurable options, and windows could generate a configuration dialog for them. I think this is already is thing in Windows for NICs, I remember seeing TCP offload options when I go into properties for a NIC in the device manager.
You just need to make it a bit more accessible to non-tech users and with more modern control options such as colour wheels for RGB.
And the Linux software for these sort of devices (when such software exist) don't tend to be as bloated. Usually the driver just exposes some control files under /sys and someone else builds a GUI or such on top. But there is no reason you couldn't also expose a schema that describes what the options do to make a more generic GUI for those.
As a user I agree, but I think this misunderstands the Windows market. Forget about mice for a second, if you look at GPU drivers between Linux and Windows on Linux they... just work, and you can use some apps to modify exposed features, like you said.
On Windows out of the box they kind of work, but you really need a manufacturer's software suite to take full advantage of them, and that software suite is, surprise, an advertising and analytics platform, a situation I think both Microsoft and the peripheral manufacturers are very happy with.
>On Windows out of the box they kind of work, but you really need a manufacturer's software suite to take full advantage of them, and that software suite is, surprise, an advertising and analytics platform, a situation I think both Microsoft and the peripheral manufacturers are very happy with.
What we're saying is this shouldn't be allowed by the OS to begin with. Not to merely use the peripheral in any case.
Whether Microsoft is happy with allowing it, is another matter.
Perhaps some law accompanied with hefty fines can make them less happy doing it.
Configurable peripherals should store their configurations entirely on-board, and they should be configurable using a well-understood protocol. Users can then use either the vendor's application, a common third-party application, or the configuration interface native to their desktop environment to configure them. When they plug them into a new machine, they should just keep working without having to install any configuration software.
Many generations of Roccat peripherals were usable this way on Linux, thanks to the work of one generous volunteer who reverse-engineered them.
Companies like Logitech don't store their devices' configs in firmware in a way that "forces" you to run some additional shit to use all of their features (some features aren't implemented in software). It's a convenient excuse that allows them to push their spyware onto users, but it's totally unnecessary.
A vendor that was actually "user friendly" in the deep sense (opposite of "user hostile") would do this themselves; configuration would be upstream-first via libratbagd or whatever, and then they'd provide their own configuration interface as a value-add for a uniform cross-platform experience, or in areas where they thought they could provide a better UI than the design principles of KDE and GNOME, or so that they could have a uniform interface to refer to in their documentation.
Linux users think of a driver as the thing that makes my silently hardware do the existing things its supposed to do like every other item in its class.
Windows users think of the driver as what makes the hardware do what everything in its class does but subtly different and somehow glued to a command center with its own unique and bad GUI auto started, in the tray, with its own update schedule, and ads.
There are people working on this problem honestly. The general solution 10 years ago was a micro kernel. Today, I’m not sure. The linux model is starting to look dated, with similar problems elsewhere. Modern hardware design looks less and less like classic textbook design, with all kinds of random chips having direct memory access to memory the cpu uses on some shared bus. Where even things like on board blue tooth chips can become attack vectors on the system.
There was a good keynote on the topic 5 years ago By Timothy Roscoe
Agree with all of those points and there are some partial solutions (IOMMU, userspace drivers, virtualization,...), but we're still quite far from being able to safely connect untrusted hardware and load its driver without effectively giving it privileged access.
Microsoft has a program to do static and dynamic analysis of drivers... not a sandbox, but better than nothing. Of course, wonky drivers plus wonky hardware can still do bad things (io-mmu can help, a bit).
The problems tend to be in the userspace software that's also installed with the driver. Sometimes there's also some pretty derpy stuff where the driver wants to talk to the userspace software but there's no validation/verification and that opens up a big hole.
Yes, but unless all 3rd party drivers can run in userspace (which is not really feasible), Microsoft needs to give vendors the option to install a kernel driver, at which point a vendor can always decide to ship a kernel driver and bypass any restrictions.
Imo, the only thing Microsoft can meaningfully do here from their side is threaten LG with pulling all their drivers if they keep doing this.
Drivers still need to pass certification & get signed. Microsoft does get to reject them.
I can't imagine the group doing this validation is sufficiently manned/funded; it's a cost centre, and the effects of cutting it don't show up for years.
I expect that process to be mostly automated, I wouldn't expect the MS folks at the testing lab to do much (if any) manual testing, especially for a new version of a previously approved driver.
I'm not surprised that the driver got approved, especially if the previous versions already had some user UI and this update "just" added the ads. What I would hope now is for MS to either pull the updated driver or ask LG to roll the change back themselves, possibly under the thread of pulling their drivers altogether (iirc they done that with other companies in the past).
First of all, drivers don't have to run in kernel space. Do you know that? I'm guessing no, based on your comment.
Second, we're not talking about the drivers per se, as those aren't what shows you ads, it's the configuration software and accompanying crapware. Did you get that? I'm guessing no, based on your comment.
Third, there are capability-based kernels, microkernels, drivers that are allowed into as restricted bytecode, IOMMU, and several other layers of security. Do you know that? I'm guessing no, based on your comment.
No mainstream desktop OS tries very hard to sandbox drivers. Some drivers on both Windows and Linux (not very familiar with Mac) can be implemented as userspace drivers, as long as the performance hit is acceptable, but for many devices (e.g., graphics drivers), you need a kernel driver to get reasonable performance.
Therefore, if your OS supports loading 3rd party binary drivers (Windows do, Linux technically does as well, but tries to make them hard to use in practice), it cannot really refuse to load kernel drivers and only allow userspace ones without breaking a lot of machines.
Even if you have a userspace driver, the device may still get DMA access to RAM. IOMMU is a thing, but due to backwards compatibility, the driver chooses whether to enable IOMMU protection for the specific device on Windows.
If you're willing to write your own microkernel and bootstrap its driver ecosystem from scratch, your claims would be reasonable. With current desktop OS architecture, not really.
As for the accompanying software, there is a good explanation in another comment of all the valid use cases it has (printer dialogs, audio interface configuration,...). LG abusing that to show ads is primarily LG's problem.
You do, when you're responding to "Do you even know how drivers work? (I'm guessing no, based on this comment)". I'm merely giving them back their toxic comment right back.
I'm not sure how I missed they did it first, but doing it more isn't really helping. Oh well, I shouldn't have said anything, it's not great but it's not worth fussing about.
Though there is a limit to how much you can effectively sandbox a driver for most devices. They do have a point even if they made it badly. I know you listed some methods but they don't generalize to arbitrary devices very well.
You're right regarding the tone, it just rubbed me off the wrong way. Especially since I (originally) made a neutral comment and didn't insult anybody.
>Though there is a limit to how much you can effectively sandbox a driver for most devices. They do have a point even if they made it badly. I know you listed some methods but they don't generalize to arbitrary devices very well.
Likely not, but the rarer cases could always be exceptions.
Most devices, screens, printers, mice, audiocards, etc should not have to go through this, at least not for basic functioning.
Which is why I like e.g. "class compliant" devices for example, whereas the configurations can be managed directly from the OS with no third party driver loaded. Some of those do come with the custom proprietary driver, but for most I don't even bother installing it.
Auto-run when inserting a CD worked great, until people realized you could do bad stuff with it. User action must be required to run or install new software.
A few years ago, plugging in a Razer USB mouse made Windows download and run a installer from which the current user could start PowerShell with administrator privileges. Razer first tried to downplay the issue, but fixed it later. [1]
The USB protocol does not have any authentication, just a VendorID/ProductID pair: 2×16 bits that Windows uses for looking up the driver package to install. Programming a MCU to use any VendorID/ProductID is straightforward.
A USB device could even appear innocuous at first but after a timer or external trigger disconnect and reconnect masquerading as another device.
not a usb programmer, but are you saying i can buy any old usb chip and program it with any vendors ID and spoof windows into giving me admin? if so, gj micrcosoft.
You could use any programmable microcontroller with a USB interface. Consumer products tend to have fuses set to they can't be programmed again.
The latest driver registered with Microsoft for the product you're going to spoof would need to have a vulnerability to exploit. You can't supply any driver.
You can pretend to be any vid:pid with usb gadget mode. For example with a raspberry pi zero something.
But you can't pretend to be any vendors id, only the ones with vulnerabilities. And the drivers or spyware will be downloaded by windows from the vendor's site, not from your peripheral.
But yes, usb device identifier is done through software/firmware.
A USB attack-widget isn't limited to just one VID:PID pair. It can present itself as as hub with as many VID:PIDs behind it as is useful. (This isn't new or exotic functionality; the very first USB thumb drive I ever owned did this as a built-in, maybe 20 years ago.)
So, for instance: A single physical widget can present as a thing that makes Windows install vulnerable software, and as a keyboard that issues commands hook that vulnerability, and as a storage device that provides a payload, while also [or ultimately] appearing as the fully-functional device that the user actually intended to use.
Game over.
The end-user might see a brief flurry of stuff happening while this goes on, but that's no big deal: End-users are already accustomed to seeing that kind of thing when new hardware is introduced, and clicking whatever button it is that they're required to click in order to proceed.
You can also spoof a keyboard and simulate keystrokes to open terminals and run arbitrary commands. I don't know about Windows, but on Linux it's possible to block USB connections by default and filter them in userspace:
This allows enforcing rules like "never add an additional keyboard". But the USB protocol has no support for strong device authentication, so there's no way to prevent a device from acting like a malicious version of something in the device class you expected it to be without abandoning "plug and play" altogether (a reasonable solution in secure environments where unused ports are often physically blocked).
It's one mode of barcode readers and not a particularly good one as it can't do arbitrary binary barcodes for obvious reasons and comes with all kinds of security concerns when you're scanning untrusted barcodes. Sadly even though barcode readers usually also support other modes (e.g. emulated serial over USB), many of them support switching modes via special barcodes so remain vulnerable.
You can "spoof" any system where you can load older drivers into giving you admin/root, you just need to find a vulnerable driver. Nothing Windows-specific in that.
The windows-specific part is that there is a huge repository of dubious quality vendor drivers that are automatically loaded over the internet. Kernel modules shipped with your favorite Linux distro are not even remotely comparable to that situation.
- eight years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/8tlre3/why_is_it...: “I can't seem to stop it from installing device drivers, even after unchecking the 'Do you want to automatically download manufacturers' apps and custom icons available for your devices?' and saving.
I uncheck it, reboot. Uninstall all drivers except USB (so I can use mouse and keyboard) and reboot. Aproximately two minutes after the reboot, I get notification ballons telling me everything is installed again. Heck, even the super old Nvidia 388.1 driver is installed (the latest now is 393.2).”
> This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
You got a lot of replies already, but there's so much precedent. Plugging a Logitech mouse installs a network capable, autolaunch capable, pop up app for at least the past 10 years. LG's thing seems grodier, but this has been common Windows-ism for a while.
Plus even when the Logitech mouse has been moved to a different PC, the former PC will continue to get Logitech updates anyway.
Apparently so they will be one step ahead of you in case you decide to plug it in again sometime.
Graphics cards can do this too, you remove the card and go back to the motherboard's built-in HDMI port, then one day here comes a big update for the non-existent graphics adapter.
Unprecedented? Have you installed a Dell/Alienware monitor recently? I hope you enjoy having the unsigned awcc.exe autostarting with no visible ui doing good knows what with no documentation from Dell
Linux doesn't go install software just because you plug in a certain peripheral, so yeah. Same with Mac. This isn't even an attack, Windows is doing it intentionally.
I would like to know too. I purchased a OLED Alienware monitor back in 2022 when they first came out. Ive had a Linux/Windows dual-boot system but around 2023-24 I erased my Windows partition.
My uneducated guess is that it would be pretty difficult for something like this to autoinstall on linux without your permission. They can "recommend" you to install their app, but just plugging it and getting adware/malware, I hope it would be difficult.
Unlikely for any brand out there not to do this. Samsung will do it eventually if backlash isn't bad with this one with Alienware/Dell/LG. Maybe Benq, viewsonic, monoprice? I dont trust Asus not to do it either.
I have a LG TV and never connect it to Wifi. Never did I think just plugging in a HDMI cable would do this.
This is nothing new. For about 30 years now Microsoft has been constantly repeating various flavors of this “make it so a thing can automatically and silently run programs as soon as it touches your computer” thing. It’s always done in the name of user convenience. It always ends up being a fiasco. I don’t know why they keep doing it, it’s not like the exact same PHB keeps making the same decision over and over for 30 years. It’s probably one or a combination of the many well documented flavors of stupid that are deeply baked into the company’s organizational culture.
(And before the inevitable response, no this is not defending Microsoft. Pointing out that an organization’s culture is too deeply, chronically stupid to avoid opening the exact same obvious and gaping security hole over and over and over and over again is not the same as saying, “it’s fine, actually.”)
> It’s probably one or a combination of the many well documented flavors of stupid that are deeply baked into the company’s organizational culture.
It all comes from the increasingly widely held idea that the user should not be the ultimate authority over what should run on his computer. The OS vendor should have a say. Third party developers should have a say. Device manufacturers should have a say. Anyone except the user, who is just a passenger on his own system. And this mentality is not limited to Microsoft.
> I can only conclude that Windows is basically malware now...
Windows has worked like spyware since what, the late Windows 7 days or thereabout?
End users should not regard this as inevitable. Or get caught up in the how-it-works-how-to-disable swamp. Instead, cut through to the essence. It's about respect:
# Microsoft does not respect Windows users (or users of any of their offerings?).
# LG does not respect people who buy their monitors (and perhaps other products?).
Knowing that, why would you use such a sleazy company's product for daily driving? Or give them your money? Would you buy bread from a baker who pisses on your lawn every time you're not looking?
User rights or consumer protection laws aren't even part of this equation. Although they do help (sometimes a lot!) to keep companies honest.
It should be a choice. They were or nearly were convicted for being a monopoly. For most users, they're not even aware there's a hardware/software distiction.
MS-Windows GUI has cashed on this unawareness since 95. "My Computer", "The computer needs to restart"... Being deliberately incorrect to add to the existing confusion.
How it it a Windows issue that driver developers pack garbage with their drivers? If Linux supported loading 3rd party drivers (it mostly doesn't, and if Windows did that, the whole internet would be up in arms about Microsoft locking down their OS), it would have exactly the same issues.
This is basically the same as downloading a program, running it and when it downloads garbage on your computer, complaining that Windows are dumb for allowing a program to download garbage.
I wonder if this ritual of meta-self-policing serves some particular purpose or if it's just a case of the brain drawing comfort from going through a familiar ritual. "This comment adds nothing" is like the reverse amen in church of our days.
It confirms for me that I too made the right choice and it reminds people that haven't made the jump yet that they have a choice in how their operating system treats them. I'd say it added a lot more than your comment.
> This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
depending on how you look at it it has quite a bit of precedence as this falls under a long list of MS shipping "intended behavior most security researcher would assign a CVE and require it to be fixed as min. requirement for Windows usage in any company"
other wtf. microslop cases include:
- "install arbitrary software w. admin rights hooks" in BIOS which theoretically is there to install BIOS update software but there had been cases of 1. it installing other unwanted software, 2. the updater not fulfilling most minimal security standards (i.e. similar, due to 2. maybe even worse then the monitor case)
- "on boot without password requirement boot arbitrary stuff from a USB stick if correctly named" allowing a trivial bypass of TPM based full disk encryption, yes different thing but another "MS without authentication runs potentially harmful 3rd party software"
- "init scripts on USB devices", I think they stopped doing that
- ...
given that Microsofts security researchers are definitely _not_ incompetent idiots, you can safely assume that all of this features where implemented knowing what user hostile hazards they are and against their own security teams recommendations (or bypassing that team knowing they would say "wtf. no", or similar)
most absurdly MS has in all of this cases enough means to enforce a "just drivers no ad-ware/spy-ware or you get banned" policy, and could do it in a way where they still allow non-allow-listed/ban-listed hooks to be run iff the user consented to it with appropriate warnings and "remember this decision" functionality in case they say no (which besides other aspects might be relevant from a "not steeping onto anti-trust landmines" POV, through mostly older judgements as the US kinda moved from hindering oligopoly to pushing for it).
combine that with the huge f*-up of Azure in the past and their systematic mishandling of it, and no indication they will change this behavior, I really don't understand how any Company/Government agency could trust them
Perhaps no precedent in hardware, but it's basically the same as the good old Sony CD autoplay rootkit fiasco. Except this one runs in mere userland AFAICS.
> This situation has.. no precedent as far as I can tell..
No, this has been going on for years. Vendors have been pushing malicious software through the Windows Update automatic driver installation since forever. MSI and Nahimic/A-Volute (this has watchdog daemon to instantly reinstall it as well as the main app protecting the daemon), the ASUS Armory Crate bullshit, the Lenovo garbage, which initially they only put into their own images, but then started force-installing via Windows Update, Gigabyte, ... the list is really long.
If you have to use Windows, you really absolutely should disable driver installation through Windows Update.
I have a windows computer that tries to install HP Printer software automatically because it detects an HP printer on the WiFi. No physical access needed
8. ANd this isn't specific to LG. If LG can do it, anyone can, even if they aren't right now.
Buying from companies you trust isn't a solution either. Founders sometimes get into fatal car accidents or lose some of their assets in messy divorces. THe new owners may not care about "brand reputation" and sell the company to the highest bidder.
I have a logitech mouse and I'm pretty sure I was asked whether to install the logitech app, it didn't do it automatically. Same for the dell mouse I have at work, it asked to install dell somethingorother, which I declined, and it left me alone.
Anecdata from two days ago, after installing a fresh Windows 10: after inserting the dongle, a definitely non-native (styled by Logitech) popup asks me whether I want to install their app. I decline. One reboot later, the app is available in the start menu.
Edit: To be fair, I immediately uninstalled it, so I don't know if this was "just" a link to their installer app or the full app. But something definitely got downloaded and moved to a place I could not have moved it myself without accepting a UAC prompt m
Yeah, the questions showed up in non-native dialogues in both cases. I installed the Logitech one, but not the Dell. But then again, even freaking Office looks non-native on Windows, so I don't really pay attention to this aspect.
I'm tired of everything being classified as "malware". The word has no meaning anymore. Malware can mean "zero-day state-sponsored ransomware attack" or it can mean "software was automatically installed by a trusted consumer-beloved company because they forgot to make an opt-out window" (which is what I'm guessing happened here).
LG hardware laying dormant for sometimes 3 years, then installing software through backchannels silently to record your voice continuously (if the monitor has a microphone, which some models do) and taking screenshots of your monitor content every 500ms, uploaded to their servers and likely shared with data brokers and the government qualifies as malware in my book.
Are you thinking of some other malware? There's nothing in the article that mentions ANY of those things. And considering you made your account 2 days ago, I wonder if you hallucinated it. :)
Malware was always an overarching term for all kinds of unwanted software, there is no definition being widened here. The only thing that has changed is how much malware "reputable" corporations are shipping to their customers.
USB devices can also do this now. I have a Razor microphone which is otherwise a great device and requires no software to function. At soon as you plug it in to windows it tries to install some Razor crapware.
It's not quite as bad because it's not silent and you can say no, but I'm pretty sure that's only because Razor decided not to be completely evil.
In your mind. Average joes do not even know there is a firewall in windows, which is off by default. Actually none of the games, not even chrome respects the built in Windows firewall. If you have configured a firewall, it will make your life much harder, since almost nobody designs software based on the assumption that a firewall will exist. So almost everyone flies without one.
there's tons of frustratingly equally bad precedent.
for some reason it also seems like a lot of this companion software from oems is often written by part time contract / interns.
years ago there was a classic example of iirc a logitech mouse driver that was writing the coordinate position of the mouse at ~100hz to the registry.
microsoft should be applying _at least_ app store level / whql level rigor to these, but it seems if the oem is large enough they'll just gladly yolo a 2gb package of crap onto your machine because the oem said "this our driver package"
I've gotten to the point that if you're trying to show me something and I see you're using Windows, I just assume you're an unserious person and it's worthless.
All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based, and there's maybe a Windows version, but it's probably a kludge like Docker Desktop.
> All the major tools for advanced work are Linux-based
No, they aren't. Linux hasn't yet got anything remotely close to PDB symbol servers and WinDbg's record-replay debugging. perf is... an attempt.
Source: worked on Windows and Linux drivers and user-mode applications. Windows tooling blows the competition out of the water in actually advanced developer experience. Vim is cool to the ricing hackerman types but not people who actually earn salaries. Windows doesn't need Docker because it has a stable user-mode ABI.
You could exhaust Windows networking or filesystem features in an afternoon. Linux could give you a career.
I spent 20 years supporting Windows server and server applications like Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, etc, etc, and when I left that industry and got back to Linux, I was absolutely floored about what I had been missing. No wonder Windows had it's lunch eaten in virtually every facet by Linux server applications.
I know you’re joking, but there is a very small sliver of truth in there somewhere. There are some tools on windows that stand shoulder to shoulder with better os’s.
If I couldn't afford a Mac, I'd certainly try Linux, but there's a chance I'd fall back to Windows. In that case would be doing a lot in WSL. Been earning salary writing code in Vim for quite a while now (pre Claude), idk what else I'd have been using.
You can have basic and not very user friendly tool, and work on very advanced topics, such as new forms of networking, innovative database, cool filesystem or storage devices, etc...
Or you can be an advanced windows developer with very nice tools, and yet work on something utterly mundane, like an internal app which tracks time off in your company, schedules delivery of parts, or provides a (granted, very nice and polished) UI to the backend database server which runs Linux.
In my experience, most of the advanced work is done on Linux nowadays. Just look at HN front page - how many posts are Windows-only and are not "new UI over existing library/service"?
Windows does plenty of 'advanced work'. Almost all video games are written primarily on and for Windows.
> In my experience, most of the advanced work is done on Linux nowadays
That's because your experience probably hasn't ever included work on Windows internals. Take it from someone who has—the complexity and 'advancedness' of the stuff running on Windows is at least equal to that of Linux or any other OS. The fact that Windows can so thoroughly abstract the computer away from the user is in itself a massive feat that few other OSs have really managed.
> Just look at HN front page - how many posts are Windows-only
The overwhelming majority of posts on the HN front page are now LLM slop or web development. I seriously dislike this insinuation that work done on Windows is, as the grandparent claims, 'unserious' or less advanced.
I have no doubt that Windows internals are at least as complex as Linux internals. Actually they are likely much more complex - all that backward compatibility won't shrink the API surface or make it easier to program.
But are they "advanced", in the sense of "to make progress or improve"?
Take filesystems for example... Linux has zfs (this one actually came from Solaris, but the latest versions come from ZfsOnLinux), btrfs, bcachefs was pretty cool if not for all that drama. What about Windows? It has NTFS and ReFS, the latter is for enterprise segments only, and is less capable than ZFS. Don't get me wrong, I am sure that ReFS is very complex - it has many lines of code and managing it is hard, it's just it has less features than zfs.
So if you love filesystems, and want to make a difference there, which OS should you work with? Linux, or some sort of BSD.. anything but Windows.
Now, what about networking? I've read about some marketing blurbs about Windows networking features that could mean something innovative. Unfortunately that was it - marketing blurbs. No technical designs, packet formats, no blog posts... You have to go to Linux/BSD for this.
Maybe security? There is a lot of information about Windows security, because it is such a popular target. But what about active defenses? Kernel hardening, sandboxing, lightweight VMs, etc...? This all originated outside of Windows.
Now, I am happy to admit that Windows is a very complex system, and that Microsoft did a great job polishing everything and presenting it to user. Microsoft is also great at taking an experimental systems and getting them in front of everyone (all that GUI hardening comes to mind).
But if you are interested in progress of operating systems and adjacent things, the projects which advance state of the art and introduce ideas no one has implemented before... Don't look at Windows.
GamersNexus has a video diving deeper into what LG did here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9uefFYe6bM