Since these proxyware client apps do not allow users to monitor what kind of traffic goes through their IPs, the risk of finding trouble remains significant at all times.
Many of these activities are illegal in most countries and could put the owners of the residential IP addresses that appear as the source of that traffic in legal trouble.
Reddit packetstream registration#
In addition to the above, the proxyware apps reviewed by Trend Micro often facilitated illegal activities such as bulk account registration for spamming and phishing, participation in click fraud operations, SQL injection attempts, government website crawling, and more. Bulk registration of social media accounts – IPRoyal Pawns.Crawling of personally identifiable information (including national IDs and SSN) – IPRoyal Pawns.
Crawling government websites – Honeygain.Attempts to access /etc/passwd and other security scans – Honeygain, PacketStream.SQL injection probing – Honeygain, PacketStream, IPRoyal Pawns.Accessing potential click-fraud or silent advertisement sites – Honeygain.Access to 3rd-party SMS and SMS PVA services – Honeygain, PacketStream.The security researchers captured and examined traffic coming from the exit nodes of these platforms for a total of nine months in 2022, identifying several signs of suspicious activity.Ī summary of what Trend Micro saw is given below: Trend Micro investigated the claims made by popular proxyware apps like HoneyGain, TraffMonitizer, Peer2Profit, PacketStream, and IPRoyal Pawns, all promising easy ways to make money. In theory, it is a win-win situation, helping people make the most of their available bandwidth without getting charged extra by their ISP. Users sharing their connections get credits which can be exchanged for discounts on affiliated platforms or exchanged with cryptocurrency or fiat money. Datacenter IPs, on the other hand, often facilitate bot traffic and quickly find their place in blocklists. Residential IPs are valuable for routing network requests because they are considered trustworthy by network security tools that treat traffic originating from them as genuine. Home page of Honeygain, a popular network bandwidth sharing platform
Reddit packetstream download#
Users of network bandwidth-sharing platforms are asked to download a client app and then let it run in the background at all times, giving away available bandwidth or sometimes processing resources to those in need while passing traffic through the user’s IP address.
Reddit packetstream code#
Unfortunately, these proxyware platforms are promoted by many famous YouTubers and bloggers who don’t perform code vetting or process scrutiny, hence sending their audience to risky platforms. Network bandwidth-sharing applications, also known as “proxyware,” can pose grave security and legal risks to their users.Īs security company Trend Micro explains in a report published recently, several prominent proxyware platforms that turn people’s computers into residential IP proxies for others to use do not generate income for the donors but for the developers.Īdditionally, in many cases, they might expose users to malware infections and even put them in legal trouble due to someone using their IPs for illegal purposes.
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