Hobbyist Roots Budget TCL Android TV Using Years-Old Chip Vulnerability

A developer going by c4psu13 has published a rooting method for a specific TCL smart TV model — the 50C721 — built around a Mali GPU driver flaw that was publicly disclosed and patched in 2022 (tracked as CVE-2022-22706). The project was shared on GitLab.

“Rooting” a device gives the owner full administrative control over software the manufacturer normally locks down, similar in spirit to jailbreaking a phone. On smart TVs, this is typically used to strip out bloatware, block ad and telemetry traffic the manufacturer ships by default, and install unsupported software.

Most consumer rooting tools require a cable connection or a specific recovery mode, putting them firmly in hobbyist territory. This method stands out because the underlying technique can, in principle, be triggered from software running on the device itself — the kind of flaw more associated with serious security research than weekend tinkering. The author used it anyway for something fairly mundane: a cleaner TV interface.

The project is explicit about its limits. It’s described as a narrow, firmware-specific proof of concept, tested and confirmed on exactly one TCL model and firmware build rather than offered as a general TCL rooting tool. The author also notes that some test details weren’t independently re-verified before release, and the changes don’t fully survive a device reboot. No ready-to-install app is included — using it requires building from source and some comfort with Android debugging tools.

This fits a long-running pattern in the smart-TV world: budget TVs increasingly ship with aggressive ad injection and telemetry baked into the OS, and a community of hobbyists regularly works to claw back control — often by repurposing older, already-patched security vulnerabilities once a device has aged out of active support.