Do you have a “smart home” equipped with digital devices?

wsj.com - How millions of digital home devices are secretly powering cyberattacks


How Millions of Digital Home Devices Are Secretly Powering Cyberattacks
Watch WSJ’s Jack Gillum investigate how questionable foreign companies turn cheap gadgets into tools for some of the most damaging cyberattacks on record

By Jack Gillum, Emma Scott, Noah Higgins-Dunn and Robert McMillan, The Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2026

Millions of everyday consumer devices, especially knockoffs that you buy online, are being infected by a malware known as residential proxy software.

This gives anyone—including hackers—a backdoor into home networks. The Digital Citizens Alliance estimates that there are 20 million of these backdoors in the U.S… Smart doorbells, security cameras, theromstats, picture frames, tablets, cell phones, smart refrigerators…

Criminals are tapping in to them to carry out cyberattacks and other types of illegal activity around the world.

Think one of your gadgets has been infected? Here’s how to check.…

wsj.com - How to find out whether your computer is part of a botnetand what to do about it
How to Find Out Whether Your Computer Is Part of a Botnet—and What to Do About It
Watch WSJ’s Robert McMillan show off the tools needed to protect your tech from malicious software

By Robert McMillan, April 4, 2026

Residential Proxy Software can be used by hackers …

Spur is a company that keeps track of Residential Proxy Networks …Spur.us/me
… If you are running a VPN, turn that off first.
… Take a look at what’s on your network…
[end quote]

wsj.com - How to find out whether your computer is part of a botnetand what to do about it

Since these are videos I can’t paste snips so I posted free links.

When Comcast brings a suspected infected device into their lab to investigate it they put it into a Faraday box (like putting a diseased person into quarantine) because the devices could have WiFi and bluetooth and they want to protect their own systems.

They have seen DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks where 2 million computers try to reach a target web site at the same time, crashing the web site. They say there are a minimum of 10 million infected devices but nobody knows and the number could be much higher.

The bad guys pay the manufacturers a kickback to allow them to put malware on the devices.

This probably won’t happen on a house brand. For example, I have an Amazon Fire tablet which is probably trustworthy. However, infected third-party devices were ordered over Amazon and Walmart.

I’m not on a WiFi network. All my devices are hard-wired with cables. Our WiFi network is encrypted but I’m sure that’s true of everyone. My understanding is that the infected devices are brought into and connected to the networks.

Jeff, help me out with this one. Other than looking on my network, is there another way to find out if a device is infected?

Wendy (I prefer dumb refrigerators)