verita84 on Nostr: Your smart TV is secretly turning your home into a botnet. That's what researchers ...

Your smart TV is secretly turning your home into a botnet. That's what researchers found — and LG just announced it's taking action.

More than 42% of apps on LG's webOS store include code that routes internet traffic through your television, effectively hijacking your bandwidth for cryptocurrency mining or other malicious activity. The same vulnerability affects Samsung smart TVs in a quarter of their apps.

LG is responding by suspending any app that uses residential proxy SDKs. "A residential proxy network is not an intended use for LG smart TVs," says the company's SVP John Taylor. Apps found to be in violation will be removed from the store, and developers who don't comply risk having their entire presence on the platform banned.

This isn't just about bandwidth theft. These hidden SDKs operate without user knowledge or consent — including from minors using family devices. Security researchers argue that buried consent prompts are no substitute for proper transparency and oversight.

And LG has another problem: its Windows-based smart TVs have been known to silently install McAfee subscription software through Windows Update, again without explicit user approval.

The industry needs to stop treating consumer hardware as free real estate for bad actors.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/26/07/22/0426218/lg-to-ban-residential-proxies-from-smart-tv-apps?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed