Wishlist for Sonos Controller Improvements

This is an issue related to the protocol that your file server has to support in order to play nicely with the Sonos. Sonos cannot connect to any file server that doesn't support SMB1. Thus, you may have to dumb down the file server to allow SMB1 transactions. This is the equivalent of having a thick bank safe door (SMB3 has strong encryption and password protection) and then propping the safe door open with a wedge. So, yes, you have a thick safe door but the wedge disables that security feature!

Known SMB1 insecurity is perhaps not an issue for people who just store some music (for which they hopefully have backups). So what if the data is lost, it's easily replaced. Evicting the ransomware that may affect the file server may be a big headache, however. Especially if they're using a file server running an MS OS.

For anyone who is also backing up other data to the file server / NAS, SMB1 insecurity is potentially a bigger issue. The problem for file server incarnations I am familiar with is that you can't simply segment file server shares by protocol (i.e. allow SMB1 for a burner partition and SMB3+ for everything else). Thus, you potentially put the whole file server at risk when authentication protocols can be broken easily. That's why NTLM v.1 authentication (used in SMB1) is now regularly turned off by default and has to be manually enabled by the file server user.

Bottom line, using a Sonos as intended should not be an invitation to be hacked. The company should commit itself to the data security of ifs customers by not being years out of data re: best practices. It really makes me wonder what other potential issues there may be if the network stack is this out of date.

Since Sonos has not committed itself to even supporting SMB2+, the easiest solution may be to create a burner file server just for the Sonos. That way, if Sonos' credentials are compromised, all you lose is the content on the burner file server. Many access points support NAS functionality (Apple Airport Extreme, among others) and the only downside (besides having any SMB1 access at all on your network) is the additional power consumption of the attached drive and the likely greater latency accessing said data.

Damn I was looking for a "album shuffle" mode but I can't see it in the list, there's quite a few forum threads about that though...
And then global keyboard shortcuts to allow you to start/stop (or go to next albums 🙂 ) from any program. Just like in Foobar actually.

Why on God's green Earth there's an SMB security debate in a thread about improvements in the Sonos controller is yet another curious question about the nature of online fora. You'd think someone with such desperate concerns would place them in a more effective thread, rather than bury them in this one. :8

It would be nice to be able to stream music from websites easier...youtube, cdbaby....ways to discover musicians without the huge label support.

It would be nice to be able to stream music from websites easier...youtube, cdbaby....ways to discover musicians without the huge label support.

YouTube doesn't allow streaming over Sonos, or any other direct streamers like Google Chromecast.

"Why on God's green Earth there's an SMB security debate in a thread about improvements in the Sonos controller..."

... because this is a suggestion on how to improve the software running the controller? Isn't that the section we're in? Some fellow forum users wanted more background on why I thought this was important - is that bad thing? You may not consider this a pressing issue; we can agree to disagree. Cheers.

Sigh.

.. because this is a suggestion on how to improve the software running the controller?
The controller fetches library info from/via the Associated ZP. It doesn't talk SMB to the share directly.

Exactly. Controller specific improvements would be assumed to be Controller or UI specific. Though if that were the case, one couldn't shoehorn their pet peeve issue into a sticky thread in order to garner more exposure. 😉