Digital Citizens Alliance Says 20 Million U.S. Internet Connections Are Hijacked Each Year
Updated
Updated · KIRO Seattle · Jun 26
Digital Citizens Alliance Says 20 Million U.S. Internet Connections Are Hijacked Each Year
3 articles · Updated · KIRO Seattle · Jun 26
Summary
20 million U.S. internet connections are exploited annually by cybercriminals abroad, the nonprofit said, turning residential IP addresses into cover for fraud, cyberattacks, child sexual abuse material distribution and potential national security attacks.
Hijacked home connections help criminal traffic bypass bank, website and security filters by making activity appear to come from legitimate American households, leaving families at risk of law-enforcement scrutiny.
17 internet-connected devices sit in the median U.S. home, the report said, widening the attack surface as criminals exploit free VPNs, bandwidth-sharing apps, piracy devices and aging routers or smart devices.
Five years is a good replacement rule for internet devices, researchers said, alongside keeping operating systems, software and firmware updated to reduce the chance a home network is turned into a proxy.
Are your smart devices making you an unwitting accomplice for hackers?
Why are tech companies selling devices that can be weaponized by foreign adversaries?
Over 1 Million U.S. Home IPs Hijacked: How Residential Networks Fuel Global Cybercrime and Espionage
Overview
The report reveals how U.S. home internet connections are increasingly exploited by foreign adversaries and cybercriminals, turning ordinary households into unwitting participants in cybercrime and espionage. Residential proxy providers entice users to share their bandwidth, transforming home IP addresses into exit nodes for vast global proxy networks. This covert infrastructure enables malicious actors, including those linked to sanctioned entities in countries like China and Russia, to mask their activities and evade detection. The scale of this threat is immense, with millions of compromised devices worldwide, posing serious risks to both individual privacy and national security.