Your Samsung Smart TV May Have Been Routing Strangers’ Internet Traffic Through Your Home
If you own a Samsung smart TV, apps you downloaded from Samsung’s own store — including ones Samsung itself recommended — may have been quietly turning your home internet connection into an exit node for strangers’ web traffic. Samsung is now banning the practice, but the scale of what researchers found is alarming.
Norwegian cybersecurity firm Mnemonic discovered that a significant number of apps on Samsung’s Tizen smart TV platform contained residential proxy SDKs — code that, once an app is opened, routes outside traffic through the TV owner’s home IP address. The tunnel stays active even after the app is closed. A separate scan by Spur Intelligence found that 26.9 percent of all Samsung Tizen store apps carried such code.
Samsung Bans Proxy SDKs After “Editor’s Choice” App Is Caught
The most striking finding: a Pac-Man game that Samsung had featured in its “Editor’s Choice” section contained proxy code traced to Bright Data, an Israel-based proxy provider. Security researcher Harrison Sand of Mnemonic observed network traffic patterns suggesting the hijacked connections were being used for large-scale LinkedIn profile scraping and AI training data collection.
“We have already restricted new app registrations that incorporate such proxy functionalities on our Smart TV platform. We are currently implementing strict platform-wide developer policies explicitly banning residential proxy SDKs, and we are working to identify and remove all apps currently available in our store that contain these components.”
— a Samsung representative, in a statement to TechCrunch.
Sand also warned that app store reviews offer limited protection here, since the proxy functionality can be activated remotely after an app passes review. As he put it: “What was reviewed is not necessarily what is running.” He noted that a minor server-side change could potentially activate proxy code across hundreds of millions of smart TVs simultaneously.
A Pattern Across the Industry
Samsung is not alone. LG announced similar restrictions last month after discovering that approximately 42 percent of apps in its webOS store enlisted devices into proxy networks. Across both platforms, Spur Intelligence identified over 2,000 apps carrying residential proxy software out of roughly 6,000 scanned.
The risk to the TV owner is real and direct: when someone else’s traffic exits through your home IP address, any illegal activity tied to that traffic points back to your connection. The FBI issued a public service announcement earlier this year warning that device owners could face legal exposure from residential proxy abuse even without any personal involvement.
What Samsung TV Owners Should Do
Samsung has not yet published a list of affected apps. Until it does, the safest steps are to review which apps are installed on your TV, remove any you don’t actively use, and keep your TV’s firmware updated. The broader lesson echoes one that applies to Android app vetting as well: an app appearing in a curated store — even under an “Editor’s Choice” badge — is not a guarantee it’s safe.
Sources: TechCrunch, Help Net Security
