Rumors that Sonos may roll back their app....

I’m hoping the wizards at Sonos intend to restore Sonos playlist and queue editing so my system will work as it did — from the time I bought my first play1 nearly a decade ago until it all came unglued on May 7.

I have access to my archived playlists using phonos plus; but I have just discovered that if I use ‘tunein’ to listen to internet radio in the sonos app, my queue is dumped, and I then have to reboot, deselect speakers, go back to phonos plus, pull up a playlist and then go back to the sonos app to select speakers to display the list I pulled up in phonos plus.

That’s a whole lot of hassle; so I’ve reverted to using another app to play local public radio stations through a bluetooth speaker.

I’m counting on Sonos to get this sorted out by Halloween. But that might just be wishful thinking.

The whole SMB v1 question falls foul of the usual ‘corporate’ security blindness. Yes it does allow for easy attacks, but, in the context of home use for serving music, whilst the potential for exploit is high, the actual risk is extremely low, as there’s no data of any value on an old NAS full of music files. 

As long as you make it really clear that you only keep music or video on anything using SMB1, then if someone wants to go to the trouble of intercepting your Sonos streaming, fill your boots. Use a dedicated ID/password for accessing it and then use iCloud Drive or OneDrive for more important stuff which should be secure. 

In a business scenario where an SMB1 share may hold customer data etc. it’s a very different risk profile. 

At home, if something works, people just like to keep using it, esp. in the music/video space. It wouldn’t take much effort to knock up a best practice guide to help people isolate their music/video files on an old NAS. 

I suspect just as many people though were impacted by loss of HTTP and the built in config Sonos created. However I don’t see why they could provide a wizard to help users share folders securely on a PC/Mac to help users out either… 

What people may store on a NAS drive is the concern and likely one of the reasons why smbv1 support is being disabled in the NAS drives.

There are other reasons, including the smbv1 code is far more complex in terms of client to server calls than smbv2/3, as well as smbv1 is unmaintained.

From a security perspective in the home environment, the issue isn’t that someone might intercept or use the Sonos device connection to the NAS. The issue is smbv1 security is accepted as broken and the malware and ransomware writers know this just as much as the people who maintain the file sharing code.

People are generally storing more than what they consider disposable content on a NAS, whether it’s backups, photos or other documents, anything they need to easily share between different computers, without using cloud storage or usb devices. Amateur/home based photographers, video creators an increasing number of home workers from different professions for example often deal with large files and cloud/network based storage isn’t practical. A nas may provide an easy place for them to keep files without relying on the local machine storage to hold everything. It doesn’t mean they should ignore backup practices, but in the real world with home or very small businesses that often only be a consideration after it is needed.

No modern NAS manufacturer will want to sell a product which is open season for malware that makes it into a users computer or sell with a big disclaimer stating “only store X types of files on our product”

Why? My 2015 bought WD NAS supports SMB 1, 2 and 3. While I am not even sure that I will spend on a replacement when it fails seeing how little I use NAS play now, do not the new drive have similar flexibility?

PS: and just via instinct, I do not have anything other than Sonos indexed music files on the NAS for years now. With my network connected Mac running the latest OS, I see regular updates for it and any sensitive files stored on it are Mac encrypted. I may still be exposed, but I don’t know of what else I can do.

The NAS has not received any update in years...

Maybe although some will likely have started removing it already with increasing numbers as the years go on. At some point the smbv1 code will stop being available in the latest samba/cifs code. It will be a few years yet, but there are already options added to the current releases so package maintainers, oems, device manufacturers can build the code without any smbv1 support.

Like you I stream most things these days and my Nas is primarily used on the rare occasions I have an internet outage. There are things on my Nas I listen to that aren’t available on any streaming service, so a small ssd drive plugged into a 3-5 W sbc would be enough for me.

Not everyone is in the same situation and some may prefer to keep their library local rather than relying on streaming for everything or even paying monthly fees because of the size of their library.

Why don’t they just die😐, think Spence/Sonos.

I remember that line from some movie 😂

Perhaps also the “eat cake if you can’t get bread” line?!

I’m not really talking about new NAS drives, then only supporting more secure levels is fine.

As I said, if you educate people to only keep their music/video on an old NAS using SMB1, then in the home, there’s little actual risk to the user, like @Kumar who has his non-music data stored safely elsewhere. In that scenario where there was a perfectly decent working home solution, I do understand the annoyance at having to junk something that works, for a risk you can reasonably mitigate. 

For the sharing from a Mac/PC crowd, Sonos could and should have updated their desktop wizards to setup the ‘shares’ correctly. Instead they took the worst option of just removing support in the speaker firmware but leaving the now broken wizards in the (since updated) desktop apps for users to repeatedly attempt to ‘fix’ their issue without success. It’s hardly the best way to approach it. 

Buy a CD, rip it as an MP3 and save it it to my Netgear NAS. Tell Sonos where my music library is on my NAS and play any of my music when I want. That all  worked fine until the experts at Sonos screwed everything up. Now whichever way I try to get access to my music Sonos just says “No thats not gonna happen” I even tried to just connect to the music folder on my PC but again Sonos said “NO”

People have spent a lot of money on their Sonos systems but all they are good for at the moment is landfill.

SORT IT OUT SONOS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s been sorted for months now.  You just need to follow these directions exactly (Hint: You need to set up your computer as a share, you can’t just add the folder).

https://support.sonos.com/en-us/article/add-your-music-library-to-sonos