Warning: ETech 4-Channel HDMI Encoder

#1

I've been having issues recently with connection lost errors and found that my network is saturated with traffic. I have a high-end WiFi 6 Mesh router and it was so busy it was difficult signing into the admin.

I traced the traffic to the HDMI encoder and its status page showed its CPU at 100% and there was nothing streaming. Rebooting it dropped the CPU to about 25% and the network behaved normally. But then a few hours later the problem resumed.

Further investigation revealed that the encode had MANY connection open to external devices on ports 80, 443 and 8080. WhoIs revealed that the destination IPs were all in China.

I blocked traffic on these ports for the encoder and CPU dropped to 12%, lower than I had ever seen it. It's been running like this for over a week with no impact on its streaming.

I submitted this to Google's AI and it said that it had been reported that these devices were being highjacked for bitcoin mining. Seems like a stretch, but can't imagine what it could have been doing.

FYI

#2

This is why I recommended if you're gonna get some hardware, go with the more reputable ones like a LinkPi. I haven't had an issue with LinkPi or my cheap HDMI grabber phoning home (if they ever phone)

Sorry you wasted your money on Spyware junk, OP but yeah...there's a reason why the only client I whitelist is the server I host Channels on. Just too many devices out there that unnecessarily phones home. You gotta sedate them otherwise they run wild. My FireTV and my Roku TV constantly tries to phone home but adguard home won't let them

#3

This is way beyond phoning home. There had to be at least 30 different IP addresses it was connecting to.

I've been using this encoder for well over a year without an issue. Not sure what provoked it.

Anyway, with it blocked in the router, all is good!

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#4

Yeah...anyways for those who uses Adguard Home or pihole, make sure to add this blocklist for stuff like that

https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Prigent-Crypto.txt

And heres some adlists to add

You can use this too to make a lil easier

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