Samsung is taking action against TV applications that discreetly shared users' internet connections.
Researchers discovered that some apps continue to share your internet connection even after being closed.
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I never suspected that my smart TV might be acting as a connection for someone else's internet, but it turns out this has been a reality for millions of Samsung smart TV users.
So, what did the researchers find?
A Norwegian cybersecurity firm, Mnemonic, found that several popular Samsung smart TV apps, with installations on hundreds of millions of devices, include code that silently shares the owner's internet connection without their knowledge.
One of the flagged apps was a Pac-Man game that Samsung had ironically featured in its “Editor’s Choice” section. This game was found to contain code from Bright Data, an Israeli company that operates proxy networks. The company claims to have access to millions of residential connections globally and operates a marketplace for selling scraped datasets sourced from these networks.
When you launch an app with this code and agree to the consent screen—often clicked through without reading—your smart TV essentially becomes what is known in technical terms as a residential proxy. This means the code directs external web traffic through your home connection without your awareness.
The concerning part is that this routing continues even after you close the app and only ceases when you completely uninstall it from your smart TV. Harrison Sand, an offensive security consultant at Mnemonic, cautioned that a single change of code on a remote server could potentially convert hundreds of millions of these TVs into a botnet simultaneously, without any user consent.
Samsung's Response
Things became even more intriguing. Sand noticed that much of the internet traffic flowing through his own TV (without his approval) seemed to be associated with mass scraping of LinkedIn profiles and gathering data for AI training. He mentioned that he only had a glimpse of Bright Data’s extensive network.
Samsung, in response, informed TechCrunch that it is now prohibiting apps that share users' connections (as they should), has already placed restrictions on new app registrations utilizing proxy functions, and is working to identify and remove existing offenders from its store.
This development follows LG's recent ban, after similar findings indicated that around 42% of apps on LG’s store were engaging in similar activities. After reading this, I plan to check my smart TV for unfamiliar apps or those I seldom use and will uninstall them immediately, and you should consider doing the same.
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Samsung is taking action against TV applications that discreetly shared users' internet connections.
Researchers found that apps on Samsung smart TVs were silently converting millions of devices into residential proxies, leading Samsung to prohibit apps that included the concealed proxy code.