this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2023
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Leaving out the TV makes it less precise and more clickbaity because then it sounds like Android phones are affected.
I guess the problem is that "Android TV" is a specific thing that none of these devices actually are, they're just dodgy boxes running Android that can be plugged into a TV.
For me it's more clickbaity because Android TV isn't actually involved here at all.
I'd say it would be more clickbaity if you just removed the "TV", because it'd make you think of smartphones, and those would be much more concerning
Yeah I'm not sure what the correct headline is, but at least for me I definitely clicked because I thought it was to do with Android TV, which it wasn't. It was about those cheap boxes that anyone reading Ars already knows are probably filled with malware
Aren't the boxes running "Android TV", the set top box oriented flavor of Android, with e.g. the launcher designed to be operated with a TV remote and not a touch screen?
They are not themselves TVs, though, and I guess nowdays it might be most common for "Android TV" to run on the TV instead of on a separate device.
That's the problem, they're not running Android TV at all. Just regular phone Android with some third party launcher.
Are you sure? One can definitely build images of the actual "Android TV" for various SBCs and the sorts of SOCs in these TV boxes, and then load them up with malware. Why wouldn't they use that?
Honestly, I'm not entirely sure why, but for whatever reason these boxes are always running a pretty old version of regular Android. (Edit: in fact googling a couple of the devices in the article seems to confirm that)
Maybe there are more protections preventing this kind of malware on newer versions? Maybe someone just made the images a long time ago and people are just reusing them
Why not just find a different website reporting the story with a better headline? Rather than sharing the one with the headline you fear is misleading?
It's only slightly misleading and Arstechnica writes really good articles. It's pretty much the only news site I regularly browse.
Is there a better article to find?