Two days ago, Samsung’s U.S. support account tweeted a rather worrying warning to their smart TV customers: You should scan your smart TVs for malware every few weeks, specifically Samsung QLED smart TVs. The tweet was then deleted after a few hours, prompting many to wonder; Do Samsung’s devices have a security vulnerability of some sort?
The tweet, in itself, is worrying. While smart TVs are growing in their capabilities and function, shouldn’t stuff like malware scans be automated processes? TVs, after all, cater to a wide variety of consumers—including those that aren’t that comfortable with modern technology.
In addition to that, many may not even know that smart TVs even require malware scans/checks. As someone that has been using smart TVs for awhile now, I’ve personally never done a malware scan on any of my TVs—much less someone that’s adopting the technology for the first time.
As for Samsung smart TVs, they come with McAfee Security for TV built into the system;
At the moment, there haven’t been any reports of any recent security vulnerabilities within Samsung’s smart TV OS, Tizen. That said, WikiLeaks reported in 2017 that a security flaw in Tizen’s OS allowed the CIA to turn smart TVs into listening devices—through software called “Weeping Angel”.
It’s worth mentioning that smart TVs, just like many smart devices, have many functions that work over Wi-Fi (and concurrently, the internet). As such, users should always be wary of online threats, and smart TV users should run malware scans on their devices regularly.
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