Regardless of your feelings about the legality or ethics of piracy, SuperBox (which are sold at places like Best Buy and Walmart) and a whole range of other cheap Android TV boxes are designed to steal your financial information, use your home network to create botnets and may even be used for industrial espionage.

Via Krebs on Security:

…Superbox media streaming devices for sale at retailers like BestBuy and Walmart may seem like a steal: They offer unlimited access to more than 2,200 pay-per-view and streaming services like Netflix, ESPN and Hulu, all for a one-time fee of around $400. But security experts warn these TV boxes require intrusive software that forces the user’s network to relay Internet traffic for others, traffic that is often tied to cybercrime activity such as advertising fraud and account takeovers.

I know. They sell them at Walmart, and Best Buy (no, I’m not linking to them), and even The Verge did an article about Superbox, so how bad can they be?

Bad. Real Bad.

I just learned about how dangerous these devices are via The Darknet Diaries, where Jack Rhysider interviews one of the hackers, “D3ada55”, who brought much of this to light. They discuss the investigation underway, the FBI’s warning about the BADBOX 2.0 botnet, and the insidious way they are marketed.

Also covered is how they scan your network, can steal your info / financials / crypto, knock devices off your network and impersonate them to find other devices, and chew up your bandwidth for botnets.

These things come with TeamViewer installed and set up for remote access, have strangely long Bluetooth antennas for scanning nearby devices, and more.

Listen to the full scope of what these machines actually do, from the mouth of one of the researchers who exposed these devices for what they are.

And please, before you decide to sail the wide pirate sea, make sure you do your research on the devices you use, or better yet, roll your own solution.