Samsung and LG vow to remove 'botnet' apps from their smart TV app stores that turned sets into an AI scraping machines — but the shocking claim that over 40% of webOS apps had botnet code raises the question of how things ever got this bad
And because the proxy feature doesn't require the app to be open, TV owners would be none the wiser.According to security researcher Harrison Sand at Mnemonic, one of the malware-infected apps was a Pac-Man game for kids that Samsung featured as an Editor's Choice. You will receive a confirmation email shortly."},"failureMessage":"There was a problem. IPIDEA is already banned by Amazon, Roku and Google TV, and they have also restricted the new Bright Data network.LG says that it working with developers to remove the functionality from their apps, and that it will suspend any apps that don't remove it.
- ▪And because the proxy feature doesn't require the app to be open, TV owners would be none the wiser.According to security researcher Harrison Sand at Mnemonic, one of the malware-infected apps was a Pac-Man game for kids that Samsung featur
- ▪You will receive a confirmation email shortly."},"failureMessage":"There was a problem.
- ▪IPIDEA is already banned by Amazon, Roku and Google TV, and they have also restricted the new Bright Data network.LG says that it working with developers to remove the functionality from their apps, and that it will suspend any apps that do
TechRadar publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under tech. We currently carry 2,570 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | TechRadar |
| Canonical URL | https://www.techradar.com/televisions/samsung-and-lg-vow-to-remove-botnet-apps-from-their-smart-tv-app-stores-that-turned-sets-into-an-ai-scraping-machines-but-the-shocking-claim-that-over-40-percent-of-webos-apps-had-botnet-code-raises-the-question-of-how-things-ever-got-this-bad |
| Publication time | Mon, 21 Sep 2026 11:46:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-21T11:53:47.720Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-21T11:53:47.720Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | BzvtU43neYTB · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Televisions Samsung and LG vow to remove 'botnet' apps from their smart TV app stores that turned sets into an AI scraping machines — but the shocking claim that over 40% of webOS apps had botnet code raises the question of how things ever got this bad News By Carrie Marshall Published 21 September 2026 Your TV may have been busy… When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Future) Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter Malware botnets route traffic through the internet connection on many smart TVsRoku, Fire TV, Tizen and webOS all affectedSome…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at TechRadar.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from TechRadar
