Smart televisions accounted for more home IoT vulnerabilities than any other device category, as researchers recorded billions of automated probes across increasingly connected households.
Bitdefender and NETGEAR’s latest IoT security research suggests that the connected home is becoming more crowded and more exposed at the same time. Their 2026 IoT Security Landscape Report analysed 5.4 billion security events across about 10.4 million protected home networks over nine months, and found that the average household now has 24 connected devices, up from 22 a year earlier. That increase matters because every additional gadget can create another route into a domestic network, especially when devices are left unpatched or no longer supported.
The clearest warning in the report concerns smart televisions. According to the findings, smart TVs accounted for 22.7% of observed vulnerabilities, narrowly ahead of smart plugs at 22.4% and network-attached storage devices at 22%. Together, those three categories made up more than two-thirds of the vulnerabilities identified. The report also recorded 4.85 billion automated port scans during the same period, averaging roughly 19.2 million a day, a sign of constant probing of consumer networks by automated systems.
A further concern is how closely the report ties most of the observed risk to known software flaws. It says almost 99.97% of the vulnerabilities it observed were associated with publicly documented issues, which reinforces a familiar security lesson: the main weakness is often not sophistication, but neglect. Devices that do not receive security updates, or that remain in service long after support ends, can become easy targets even when the underlying flaw is already well understood.
The report goes beyond network exposure and touches on privacy worries around smart TVs themselves. It cites third-party investigations suggesting some televisions may collect voice recordings, monitor viewing habits, track other devices on a household network and gather location data, with some collection potentially continuing even when the set appears switched off. It also points to free smart TV apps that may route third-party traffic through a household connection, including for AI data scraping, without users fully understanding what they have allowed. Those privacy claims were described as being drawn from external investigations rather than independently verified by the report’s authors.
For households, the practical advice is straightforward. The report recommends keeping routers and connected devices updated, replacing products that no longer receive security patches and changing default passwords. That guidance is unglamorous but relevant, because the main risks identified in the report are not exotic attacks but the routine accumulation of outdated hardware, permissive settings and devices that were never designed with long-term security in mind.
Disclaimer: This content is intended for informational purposes only. Readers are advised to exercise their own judgement, conduct due diligence, or consult a qualified expert before acting on any information provided.
