Description

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), along with industry partners, announced a major disruption of IPIDEA, a sprawling residential proxy network considered one of the world’s largest. Legal action led to the seizure and takedown of dozens of domains that controlled millions of hijacked devices used to proxy traffic. The move effectively degraded the network’s operations and hindered access to its infrastructure. IPIDEA operated as a global residential proxy ecosystem that covertly enlisted consumer devices smartphones, IoT devices, and computers as exit nodes, routing internet traffic through unsuspecting users’ connections. Devices became part of the proxy network by either pre-installed proxy software or through trojanized applications bundling embedded SDKs (software development kits). These SDKs, such as CastarSDK, EarnSDK, HexSDK, and PacketSDK, were marketed to app developers as monetization tools. When integrated, they quietly enrolled devices into the proxy infrastructure. Once a device joined, malicious actors could mask their activities, bypass security defenses, and launch various attacks ranging from credential spraying and SaaS environment access to infrastructure infiltration. GTIG’s analysis identified over 600 Android apps and 3,075 Windows binaries linking to IPIDEA’s command-and-control systems. Certain malware families and botnets (e.g., AISURU/Kimwolf, BADBOX 2.0) exploited the proxy services to propagate and relay commands through infected endpoints.