Your Smart TV Is Someone Else's Exit Node: Tearing Down the Bright Data webOS SDK

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This isn’t news — but it’s worth seeing up close

In June 2026, Include Security (with independent researcher “Buchodi”) published The Smart TV in Your Living Room Is a Node in the AI-Scraping Economy, documenting how Bright Data’s SDK — embedded in free consumer apps — turns always-on devices into exit nodes for its “150M+ / 400M+ residential IP” proxy network. It got wide pickup (The Hacker News, Help Net Security, Lowpass).

Spur then scanned 6,038 apps across LG webOS and Samsung Tizen and found proxy SDKs in 2,058 of them — 42.5% of webOS apps, 26.9% of Tizen, 34.1% across both. Google, Amazon and Roku have since restricted background proxy SDKs and Bright Data dropped those platforms; webOS and Tizen are still supported.

Residential Proxy on Blaž Škufca

Your Smart TV Is Someone Else's Exit Node: Tearing Down the Bright Data webOS SDK

This isn’t news — but it’s worth seeing up close