Your smart TV or streaming box may be quietly renting out your home internet connection to criminals, the FBI warns, as investigators dismantle botnets that turn everyday devices into tools for crime. According to IBTimes, over two million hijacked consumer devices — including smart TVs and streaming boxes — were acting as exit points in a residential proxy network.
The internet-connected gadgets filling modern homes are computers, and like any computer they can be hijacked. What makes this scheme insidious is that a compromised device shows no obvious sign of trouble while it quietly lends a household’s identity to criminals operating around the world.
How a TV becomes a crime relay
In these schemes, malware turns a home device into a residential proxy, routing other people’s internet traffic through the victim’s connection. Because the traffic appears to come from an ordinary home, criminals use it to disguise fraud, credential attacks and other illegal activity, effectively borrowing an innocent household’s IP address as cover.
A residential IP address carries a trust that data-center addresses do not, since it looks like an ordinary person browsing from home. That is exactly why criminals covet hijacked home devices: routing their activity through a real household makes fraud and attacks far harder for security systems to detect and block. The victim, meanwhile, may unknowingly have their connection tied to crimes they never committed.
Infected before you open the box
One of the most unsettling details is that many affected devices arrived with malicious software already installed, before the owner ever set them up. That means buyers can be compromised from day one without doing anything wrong, and without any obvious sign that their device is working for someone else in the background.
Pre-installed malware points to a compromise somewhere in the supply chain rather than to a careless click by the user, and it is especially common in cheap, off-brand hardware. A device tainted before it reaches the shelf gives its owner no realistic chance to avoid infection through good habits alone, which is part of what makes this class of threat so difficult for consumers to defend against.
Protecting your home network
The FBI and security researchers advise buying streaming devices from reputable sources, keeping firmware updated, and watching for warning signs like sluggish internet or a device that runs hot when idle. Rebooting hardware, changing default passwords and, where possible, replacing devices no longer receiving security updates all help. The broader lesson is that any internet-connected gadget in the home can become a target, and cheap, unvetted devices carry the most risk.
Sticking to established brands and authorized retailers reduces the odds of buying tainted hardware, while keeping software current closes known vulnerabilities. Signs such as unexplained network slowdowns or a device that stays warm when not in use can hint at hidden activity. Retiring gadgets that no longer receive security updates removes easy targets, reinforcing that home network security now extends well beyond the computer to every connected device.
This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
