Samsung is taking action against smart TV applications that turn home televisions into exit nodes for residential proxy networks. Security researchers at Mnemonic recently discovered that several popular apps, including a featured Pac-Man game, contained code that funneled third-party web traffic through user internet connections. This process effectively converts the smart TV into a bridge for outside actors to mask their online activities.
These residential proxies allow strangers to route traffic through private home or office networks. While the technology serves legitimate purposes like scraping data for AI model training or evading censorship, it is often tied to cybercrime. Because this traffic originates from a standard household IP address, security systems struggle to identify and block malicious behavior. The research highlights a specific risk where a simple remote update to an app could activate millions of devices as part of a botnet without the owner knowing.
Following the disclosure, Samsung stated it is moving to restrict new app registrations that use residential proxy software. The company is actively removing existing apps from its store that include these components. This decision mirrors a similar policy change made by LG last month after reports indicated a high volume of apps on its own platform were enlisting user devices into these networks.
Users should be aware that these applications often bypass standard security reviews because the code inside the app is separate from the dynamic content it fetches from external servers. Even when an app is closed, the residential proxy functionality may continue to run in the background. Security experts emphasize that this creates a silent, always-on tunnel for external parties to tap into private home networks. Samsung now expects developers to comply with new platform-wide policies to maintain access to the smart TV ecosystem.