There’s malware lurking in shady smartphone apps and cheap off-brand household electronics. It has allowed operators of massive so-called botnet networks to use people’s home and wireless network access for dangerous hacking sprees and other criminal activity.
So you probably want to know: Are you affected?
I describe these “residential proxy networks” in the story of college student and cyber-sleuth Benjamin Brundage. They’re a crazy phenomenon with plenty of uses—some legitimate, many illegal.
Some devices ship with residential proxy software preinstalled on them—this can happen with certain low-cost video-streaming systems—and sometimes people download the code unwittingly to their smartphones. Such software can give anyone—even hackers—a back door into your home network. And if they use your network for illegal activity, there’s a chance that law enforcement could come knocking at your door.
Fortunately, you can check pretty quickly to see whether your home network is clean. Unfortunately, if your network doesn’t get a clean bill of health, it’s a bigger challenge to find out what’s wrong.
The internet intelligence company Spur investigates residential proxy networks and keeps a list of all of their known internet locations, aka nodes. Spur built a quick-test page that looks at your home network’s IP address—the internet’s version of a phone number.
Residential proxy software has been spotted on cheap, off-brand video-streaming gadgets, too. Experts say if you have bought a device that lets you stream sports or paid content free of charge, there’s a good chance it’s infected. Cheap digital picture frames from unrecognizable brands are also suspect.