On the floor, the Superbox media streaming gadgets on the market at retailers like BestBuy and Walmart might appear to be a steal: They provide limitless entry to greater than 2,200 pay-per-view and streaming companies like Netflix, ESPN and Hulu, all for a one-time charge of round $400. However safety specialists warn these TV containers require intrusive software program that forces the consumer’s community to relay Web visitors for others, visitors that’s usually tied to cybercrime exercise comparable to promoting fraud and account takeovers.
Superbox media streaming containers on the market on Walmart.com.
Superbox payments itself as an inexpensive method for households to stream the entire tv and film content material they might probably need, with out the effort of month-to-month subscription charges — for a one-time fee of almost $400.
“Uninterested in complicated cable payments and hidden charges?,” Superbox’s web site asks in a current weblog submit titled, “Low cost Cable TV for Low Earnings: Watch TV, No Month-to-month Payments.”
“Actual low cost cable TV for low revenue options does exist,” the weblog continues. “This information breaks down one of the best options to cease overpaying, from free over-the-air choices to one-time buy gadgets that eradicate month-to-month payments.”
Superbox claims that watching a stream of films, TV exhibits, and sporting occasions received’t violate U.S. copyright legislation.
“SuperBox is rather like some other Android TV field in the marketplace, we can’t management what software program clients will use,” the corporate’s web site maintains. “And also you received’t encounter a legislation situation except importing, downloading, or broadcasting content material to a big group.”
A weblog submit from the Superbox web site.
There’s nothing unlawful concerning the sale or use of the Superbox itself, which can be utilized strictly as a technique to stream content material at suppliers the place customers have already got a paid subscription. However that isn’t why individuals are shelling out $400 for these machines. The one technique to watch these 2,200+ channels at no cost with a Superbox is to put in a number of apps made for the machine that allow them to stream this content material.
Superbox’s homepage features a distinguished message stating the corporate does “not promote entry to or preinstall any apps that bypass paywalls or present entry to unauthorized content material.” The corporate explains that they merely present the {hardware}, whereas clients select which apps to put in.
“We solely promote the {hardware} machine,” the discover states. “Clients should use official apps and licensed companies; unauthorized use might violate copyright legislation.”
Superbox is technically appropriate right here, aside from perhaps the half about how clients should use official apps and licensed companies: Earlier than the Superbox can stream these 1000’s of channels, customers should configure the machine to replace itself, and step one entails ripping out Google’s official Play retailer and changing it with one thing known as the “App Retailer” or “Blue TV Retailer.”
Superbox does this as a result of the machine doesn’t use the official Google-certified Android TV system, and its apps is not going to load in any other case. Solely after the Google Play retailer has been supplanted by this unofficial App Retailer do the varied film and video streaming apps which are constructed particularly for the Superbox seem out there for obtain (once more, outdoors of Google’s app ecosystem).
Consultants say whereas these Android streaming containers typically do what they promote — enabling consumers to stream video content material that will usually require a paid subscription — the apps that allow the streaming additionally ensnare the consumer’s Web connection in a distributed residential proxy community that makes use of the gadgets to relay visitors from others.
Ashley is a senior options engineer at Censys, a cyber intelligence firm that indexes Web-connected gadgets, companies and hosts. Ashley requested that solely her first identify be used on this story.
In a current video interview, Ashley confirmed off a number of Superbox fashions that Censys was learning within the malware lab — together with one bought off the shelf at BestBuy.
“I’m positive lots of people are pondering, ‘Hey, how unhealthy may it’s if it’s on the market on the large field shops?’” she stated. “However the extra I seemed, issues received weirder and weirder.”
Ashley stated she discovered the Superbox gadgets instantly contacted a server on the Chinese language on the spot messaging service Tencent QQ, in addition to a residential proxy service known as Grass IO.
GET GRASSED
Also called getgrass[.]io, Grass says it’s “a decentralized community that permits customers to earn rewards by sharing their unused Web bandwidth with AI labs and different firms.”
“Consumers search unused web bandwidth to entry a extra numerous vary of IP addresses, which allows them to see sure web sites from a retail perspective,” the Grass web site explains. “By using your unused web bandwidth, they’ll conduct market analysis, or carry out duties like internet scraping to coach AI.” 
Reached through Twitter/X, Grass founder Andrej Radonjic instructed KrebsOnSecurity he’d by no means heard of a Superbox, and that Grass has no affiliation with the machine maker.
“It seems like these containers are distributing an unethical proxy community which individuals are utilizing to attempt to benefit from Grass,” Radonjic stated. “The purpose of grass is to be an opt-in community. You obtain the grass app to monetize your unused bandwidth. There are tons of sketchy SDKs on the market that hijack individuals’s bandwidth to assist webscraping firms.”
Radonjic stated Grass has applied “a strong system to establish community abusers,” and that if it discovers anybody attempting to misuse or circumvent its phrases of service, the corporate takes steps to cease it and forestall these customers from incomes factors or rewards.
Superbox’s guardian firm, Tremendous Media Know-how Firm Ltd., lists its road handle as a UPS retailer in Fountain Valley, Calif. The corporate didn’t reply to a number of inquiries.
In response to this teardown by behindmlm.com, a weblog that covers multi-level advertising (MLM) schemes, Grass’s compensation plan is constructed round “grass factors,” that are earned by the usage of the Grass app and thru app utilization by recruited associates. Associates can earn 5,000 grass factors for clocking 100 hours utilization of Grass’s app, however they need to progress by ten affiliate tiers or ranks earlier than they’ll redeem their grass factors (presumably for some sort of cryptocurrency). The tenth or “Titan” tier requires associates to build up a whopping 50 million grass factors, or recruit at the least 221 extra associates.
Radonjic stated Grass’s system has modified in current months, and confirmed the corporate has a referral program the place customers can earn Grass Uptime Factors by contributing their very own bandwidth and/or by inviting different customers to take part.
“Customers usually are not required to take part within the referral program to earn Grass Uptime Factors or to obtain Grass Tokens,” Radonjic stated. “Grass is within the technique of phasing out the referral program and has launched an up to date Grass Factors mannequin.”
A evaluate of the Phrases and Situations web page for getgrass[.]io on the Wayback Machine exhibits Grass’s guardian firm has modified names at the least 5 instances in the middle of its two-year existence. Looking out the Wayback Machine on getgrass[.]io exhibits that in June 2023 Grass was owned by an organization known as Wynd Community. By March 2024, the proprietor was listed as Decrease Tribeca Corp. within the Bahamas. By August 2024, Grass was managed by a Half Area Labs Restricted, and in November 2024 the corporate was owned by Grass OpCo (BVI) Ltd. Presently, the Grass web site says its guardian is simply Grass OpCo Ltd (no BVI within the identify).
Radonjic acknowledged that Grass has undergone “a handful of company clean-ups during the last couple of years,” however described them as administrative modifications that had no operational impression. “These replicate regular early-stage restructuring because the undertaking moved from preliminary growth…into the present construction below the Grass Basis,” he stated.
UNBOXING
Censys’s Ashley stated the telephone house to China’s Tencent QQ on the spot messaging service was the primary pink flag with the Superbox gadgets she examined. She additionally found the streaming containers included highly effective community evaluation and distant entry instruments, comparable to Tcpdump and Netcat.
“This factor DNS hijacked my router, did ARP poisoning to the purpose the place issues fall off the community to allow them to assume that IP, and tried to bypass controls,” she stated. “I’ve root on all of them now, and so they even have a folder known as ‘secondstage.’ These gadgets even have Netcat and Tcpdump on them, and but they’re speculated to be streaming gadgets.”
A fast on-line search exhibits varied Superbox fashions and lots of related Android streaming gadgets on the market at a variety of prime retail locations, together with Amazon, BestBuy, Newegg, and Walmart. Newegg.com, for instance, at the moment lists greater than three dozen Superbox fashions. In all circumstances, the merchandise are offered by third-party retailers on these platforms, however in lots of cases the achievement comes from the e-commerce platform itself.
“Newegg is fairly unhealthy now with these gadgets,” Ashley stated. “Ebay is the funniest, as a result of they’ve Superbox in Spanish — the SuperCaja — which may be very standard.”
Superbox gadgets on the market through Newegg.com.
Ashley stated Amazon not too long ago cracked down on Android streaming gadgets branded as Superbox, however that these listings can nonetheless be discovered below the extra generic title “modem and router combo” (which can be barely nearer to the reality concerning the machine’s conduct).
Superbox doesn’t promote its merchandise within the typical sense. Quite, it appears to depend on lesser-known influencers on locations like Youtube and TikTok to advertise the gadgets. In the meantime, Ashley stated, Superbox pays these influencers 50 p.c of the worth of every machine they promote.
“It’s bizarre to me as a result of influencer advertising normally caps compensation at 15 p.c, and it means they don’t care concerning the cash,” she stated. “That is about constructing their community.”
A TikTok influencer casually mentions and promotes Superbox whereas chatting together with her followers over a glass of wine.
BADBOX
As plentiful because the Superbox is on e-commerce websites, it is only one model in an ocean of no-name Android-based TV containers out there to shoppers. Whereas these gadgets typically do present consumers with “free” streaming content material, additionally they have a tendency to incorporate factory-installed malware or require the set up of third-party apps that interact the consumer’s Web handle in promoting fraud.
In July 2025, Google filed a “John Doe” lawsuit (PDF) in opposition to 25 unidentified defendants dubbed the “BadBox 2.0 Enterprise,” which Google described as a botnet of over ten million Android streaming gadgets that engaged in promoting fraud. Google stated the BADBOX 2.0 botnet, along with compromising a number of sorts of gadgets prior to buy, can even infect gadgets by requiring the obtain of malicious apps from unofficial marketplaces.
Among the unofficial Android gadgets flagged by Google as a part of the Badbox 2.0 botnet are nonetheless broadly on the market at main e-commerce distributors. Picture: Google.
A number of of the Android streaming gadgets flagged in Google’s lawsuit are nonetheless on the market on prime U.S. retail websites. For instance, trying to find the “X88Pro 10” and the “T95” Android streaming containers finds each proceed to be peddled by Amazon sellers.
Google’s lawsuit got here on the heels of a June 2025 advisory from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which warned that cyber criminals had been gaining unauthorized entry to house networks by both configuring the merchandise with malicious software program previous to the consumer’s buy, or infecting the machine because it downloads required functions that include backdoors, normally in the course of the set-up course of.
“As soon as these compromised IoT gadgets are related to house networks, the contaminated gadgets are inclined to changing into a part of the BADBOX 2.0 botnet and residential proxy companies recognized for use for malicious exercise,” the FBI stated.
The FBI stated BADBOX 2.0 was found after the unique BADBOX marketing campaign was disrupted in 2024. The unique BADBOX was recognized in 2023, and primarily consisted of Android working system gadgets that had been compromised with backdoor malware prior to buy.
Riley Kilmer is founding father of Spur, an organization that tracks residential proxy networks. Kilmer stated Badbox 2.0 was used as a distribution platform for IPidea, a China-based entity that’s now the world’s largest residential proxy community.
Kilmer and others say IPidea is merely a rebrand of 911S5 Proxy, a China-based proxy supplier sanctioned final 12 months by the U.S. Division of the Treasury for working a botnet that helped criminals steal billions of {dollars} from monetary establishments, bank card issuers, and federal lending packages (the U.S. Division of Justice additionally arrested the alleged proprietor of 911S5).
How are most IPidea clients utilizing the proxy service? In response to the proxy detection service Synthient, six of the highest ten locations for IPidea proxies concerned visitors that has been linked to both advert fraud or credential stuffing (account takeover makes an attempt).
Kilmer stated firms like Grass are most likely being truthful once they say that a few of their clients are firms performing internet scraping to coach synthetic intelligence efforts, as a result of an excessive amount of content material scraping which in the end advantages AI firms is now leveraging these proxy networks to additional obfuscate their aggressive data-slurping exercise. By routing this unwelcome visitors by residential IP addresses, Kilmer stated, content material scraping corporations could make it far trickier to filter out.
“Net crawling and scraping has all the time been a factor, however AI made it like a commodity, knowledge that needed to be collected,” Kilmer instructed KrebsOnSecurity. “Everyone needed to monetize their very own knowledge pots, and the way they monetize that’s totally different throughout the board.”
SOME FRIENDLY ADVICE
Merchandise like Superbox are drawing elevated curiosity from shoppers as extra standard community tv exhibits and sportscasts migrate to subscription streaming companies, and as individuals start to appreciate they’re spending as a lot or extra on streaming companies than they beforehand paid for cable or satellite tv for pc TV.
These streaming gadgets from no-name know-how distributors are one other instance of the maxim, “If one thing is free, you’re the product,” which means the corporate is making a living by promoting entry to and/or details about its customers and their knowledge.
Superbox house owners would possibly counter, “Free? I paid $400 for that machine!” However bear in mind: Simply since you paid so much for one thing doesn’t imply you might be carried out paying for it, or that one way or the other you’re the just one who could be worse off from the transaction.
It could be that many Superbox clients don’t care if somebody makes use of their Web connection to tunnel visitors for advert fraud and account takeovers; for them, it beats paying for a number of streaming companies every month. My guess, nevertheless, is that fairly just a few individuals who purchase (or are gifted) these merchandise have little understanding of the cut price they’re making once they plug them into an Web router.
Superbox performs some severe linguistic gymnastics to say its merchandise don’t violate copyright legal guidelines, and that its clients alone are chargeable for understanding and observing any native legal guidelines on the matter. Nonetheless, purchaser beware: When you’re a resident of america, it’s best to know that utilizing these gadgets for unauthorized streaming violates the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and might incur authorized motion, fines, and potential warnings and/or suspension of service by your Web service supplier.
In response to the FBI, there are a number of indicators to search for which will point out a streaming machine you personal is malicious, together with:
-The presence of suspicious marketplaces the place apps are downloaded.
-Requiring Google Play Defend settings to be disabled.
-Generic TV streaming gadgets marketed as unlocked or able to accessing free content material.
-IoT gadgets marketed from unrecognizable manufacturers.
-Android gadgets that aren’t Play Defend licensed.
-Unexplained or suspicious Web visitors.
This explainer from the Digital Frontier Basis delves a bit deeper into every of the potential signs listed above.
