Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

When it comes to involunary proxies, those are really just one of many possible symptoms stemming from a real problem: Shitty security. (Edit: And shitty contract/privacy laws.)

Shitty security is tolerated by our markets, is is protected from fixes due to copyright law, and it is even encouraged by parts of our government that want to exploit the flaws. We will gain far more from fundamental quality-improvements than we will from whack-a-mole-ing on this symptom.

Specific Domains:

  proxyjs.brdtnet.com
  proxyjs.luminatinet.com
  proxyjs.bright-sdk.com
  clientsdk.bright-sdk.com
  clientsdk.brdtnet.com

  *.brdtnet.com
  *.luminatinet.com
  *.luminati.io

> Actual data and identity loss of American citizens.

> Malware that can record video and audio from infected devices.

> Infrastructure for foreign covert influence campaigns.

> Botnets used in hacking and DoS attacks

These things have existed for 20+ years. Bad but not exactly a national security threat.

Sometimes their system malfunctions (cough cough) and you get charged for those clicks but you fail to report them as fraudulent as you've no proof as the IPs and useragent all appear normal to ad agencies and advertisers.

Proxying is least of the worries!

When manufacturers bring out the smart features that require constant data collection, monitoring (obviously in the name of service quality, troubleshooting, firmware / app updates and subscription of services (!!)), it is oblivious to the fact that security and privacy at a personal / state / national level is never considered (for various reasons such as the design, profit interests and overheads / compliance perspectives and what not!) to be part of the ecosystem. Bad actors with sufficient knowledge and tools could exploit and profit from it.

It has become more of a planned obsolescence / profit / greed based industrial / corporate culture in rolling out unwanted stuff / monitoring and controlling as a feature that gets exploited to the core.

Honesntly, I don't have an answer for that, but have some thoughts that I wanted to share.

I do not want a cleaning robot or a water purifier or a printer or a TV or a refrigerator or an oven or a smart light bulb or a smart lock or even my car to have undisclosed, unwarranted connectivity to internet for whatever reasons.

I do not care if it is the manufacture or the service provider or whomsoever it may be!

I want all of the network connectivity options to be explained with all the controlling options and boundaries and data collection that happens on any of the connected medium to be as much transparent with the option of preventing or restricting what one does not want to go out of the device.

Will anyone do that?

It ill never happen! Sadly!

This problem will balloon further without adequate controls and killing the networking at a ground level would only be the only solution!

But, in the case of a connected device having an inbuilt connectivity option (like the m2m based options) in a smart vehicle, even that is not possible!

More importantly, a residential proxy can be mutual. If a group of people agree to forward traffic to each others’ IP, how is it not their business? It obfuscates their identities, but this is the Internet, not e.g. a government office or test center where you obviously can’t walk in with someone else’s ID.

Banning non-consensual proxies makes sense since those are effectively malware, even though they make anonymity harder, so does banning theft and here you’re stealing someone’s internet. I’m sure we can convince enough laymen to knowingly install proxies by paying them.

The interviewee seems pretty inept yet still managed to uncover something really interesting and nefarious.

Can’t wait to have our very own Roskomnadzor MITMing everything and national security laws mandating Kazakhstan style TLS interception on every single device.

Just a small over the air update via your friendly neighbourhood corporations Microsoft, Apple and Google.

You know. To keep you safe.

Besides, mobile proxies exist which work differently. All you need is a mobile data plan that you run a proxy server on. It allows for easy IP rotation and since it’s a pool shared with other customers you cannot easily block it. This is because of things like CGNAT.

IP rotation is easy because reconnecting to the network gives you a new IP address.

Static residential proxies also are a thing, even if they are less effective sometimes.

lets just hope some day there will be enough threats for nations to crumble

> At the very least, major American ISPs (Comcast, AT&T) should detect clearly suspicious activity coming from customer IPs and warn them to scan their computers, check their TV apps, and find whatever is turning their internet into a proxy.

What are we saying? Really, what are we saying? We should turn domestic ISPs into domestic surveillance apparatuses to "detect clearly suspicious activity"? What is "clearly suspicious activity"? Section 230 is still law.

Continuing to allow CGNAT is what allows the residential proxies to hide because it tumbles the IP identity of bad actors with normal people.

Yes, yes, we should fight deceptive software that doesn't disclose it has a proxy function. Fine. But there's no way to square 1) fighting all residential proxies, including ones run with informed consent and 2) preserving the public's access to general-purpose compute at home.

I'd rather live with the proxies than for someone to tell me that if I run squid, I'm damaging national security.