Smart TVs and Plugs Harbor Unpatched Security Flaws, Bitdefender Report Reveals
Bitdefender's latest IoT report highlights smart TVs and smart plugs as significant sources of unpatched security vulnerabilities in home networks.
A new report from Bitdefender, the 2026 IoT Security Landscape Report, has identified smart televisions and connected smart plugs as leading contributors to unpatched security flaws within the home network environment. Analyzing data from approximately 10.4 million protected home routers between January and September, the report found that televisions accounted for a substantial 22.7% of observed vulnerabilities, with smart plugs closely following at 22.4%.
These findings underscore a critical issue in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem: the disparity between device lifespan and security support. Many household electronics, including smart TVs and plugs, can remain in active use for five to ten years. However, their security support often lasts only two to four years. Once manufacturers cease providing updates, these devices can persist on home networks, harboring exploitable weaknesses that attackers can leverage.
The report also shed light on the dominant attack vectors observed. Automated port scans constituted the vast majority of detected attack-category events, making up 90.1% of the approximately 4.85 billion scan attempts recorded during the nine-month period. These scans are designed to identify accessible services, such as remote desktop or login interfaces, which can serve as initial footholds for further intrusion attempts, though a scan itself does not confirm a successful breach.
Password brute-force attempts represented another significant portion of malicious activity, accounting for approximately 8.7% of attack-category events. Of the 466.6 million brute-force events, a staggering 455 million targeted the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), a common method for remote access to Windows computers. The detections logged by Bitdefender include scans halted at routers, attempted logins, and blocked exploit patterns, but do not indicate the number of successful intrusions.
Beyond direct exploitation, the report highlights how seemingly innocuous free smart TV applications can pose privacy risks. Citing findings from security firm Spur, Bitdefender notes that some applications bundle software that can transform televisions into residential proxies, with user consent. This allows the household's internet connection to be used for activities like web scraping or market research, with the household's public IP address visible to the destination websites.
Furthermore, smart TVs themselves are capable of collecting extensive user data. Research cited in the report indicates that some LG televisions gather viewing habits, voice recordings, location data, details of other devices on the local network, and information about nearby wireless networks. Technologies like Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) identify on-screen content to enable personalized advertising, but also contribute to a comprehensive user profile.
Connected devices in the home can thus serve multiple roles: they can be targets for attackers, conduits for external traffic via proxying, sensors gathering sensitive information, or even entry points into the broader home network. As Chandan Nandakumaraiah, head of product and cybersecurity at NETGEAR, warned, "Once inside, criminals can stay hidden and move laterally across the home network."
The Bitdefender report serves as a stark reminder that the convenience of smart home devices comes with inherent security and privacy risks. The long lifespan of these devices, coupled with often-limited security support, creates a persistent attack surface that users and manufacturers must address more effectively.