Birbla

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Hacker News

No they aren't.

> Actual data and identity loss of American citizens.

> Malware that can record video and audio from infected devices.

> Infrastructure for foreign covert influence campaigns.

> Botnets used in hacking and DoS attacks

These things have existed for 20+ years. Bad but not exactly a national security threat.

by yellow_lead

My personal opinion is they're not hard to detect at all. Latency is a huge giveaway, If the client can't respond in a time you'd expect a client to be able to based on its geographic location, that's a pretty big tell they're using proxies. In fact, if you did latency sensitive stuff, you'd likely find out whether you wanted to or not.

by torginus

If anyone is curious where this leads to, I will happily point to China, Kazakhstan and Russia as prime examples.

Can’t wait to have our very own Roskomnadzor MITMing everything and national security laws mandating Kazakhstan style TLS interception on every single device.

Just a small over the air update via your friendly neighbourhood corporations Microsoft, Apple and Google.

You know. To keep you safe.

by cloudie78

They have their problems but how else am I supposed to scrape data from companies that want to hide it?

by brikym

If someone with informed consent wants to run a residential proxy, that's their right and unlikely to be a national-security problem.

When it comes to involunary proxies, those are really just one of many possible symptoms stemming from a real problem: Shitty security. (Edit: And shitty contract/privacy laws.)

Shitty security is tolerated by our markets, is is protected from fixes due to copyright law, and it is even encouraged by parts of our government that want to exploit the flaws. We will gain far more from fundamental quality-improvements than we will from whack-a-mole-ing on this symptom.

by Terr_

No, your paranoia-outage is the true "national security threat" - a threat to freedom. Stop fanning the flames and calling for more government intervention.

by userbinator

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  • Hacker News
  • First heard about this through this podcast. https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/172/
    by jayturley
  • From a previous HN discussion, these are known DNS addresses to block in regards to Smart TVs being used a residential proxies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48422993

    Specific Domains:

      proxyjs.brdtnet.com
  proxyjs.luminatinet.com
  proxyjs.bright-sdk.com
  clientsdk.bright-sdk.com
  clientsdk.brdtnet.com
    Wildcard domains:

      *.brdtnet.com
  *.luminatinet.com
  *.luminati.io
    Source: https://blog.includesecurity.com/2026/06/the-smart-tv-in-you...
    by BLKNSLVR
  • No they aren't.

    > Actual data and identity loss of American citizens.

    > Malware that can record video and audio from infected devices.

    > Infrastructure for foreign covert influence campaigns.

    > Botnets used in hacking and DoS attacks

    These things have existed for 20+ years. Bad but not exactly a national security threat.

    by yellow_lead
  • My personal opinion is they're not hard to detect at all. Latency is a huge giveaway, If the client can't respond in a time you'd expect a client to be able to based on its geographic location, that's a pretty big tell they're using proxies. In fact, if you did latency sensitive stuff, you'd likely find out whether you wanted to or not.
    by torginus
  • If anyone is curious where this leads to, I will happily point to China, Kazakhstan and Russia as prime examples.

    Can’t wait to have our very own Roskomnadzor MITMing everything and national security laws mandating Kazakhstan style TLS interception on every single device.

    Just a small over the air update via your friendly neighbourhood corporations Microsoft, Apple and Google.

    You know. To keep you safe.

    by cloudie78
  • They have their problems but how else am I supposed to scrape data from companies that want to hide it?
    by brikym
  • If someone with informed consent wants to run a residential proxy, that's their right and unlikely to be a national-security problem.

    When it comes to involunary proxies, those are really just one of many possible symptoms stemming from a real problem: Shitty security. (Edit: And shitty contract/privacy laws.)

    Shitty security is tolerated by our markets, is is protected from fixes due to copyright law, and it is even encouraged by parts of our government that want to exploit the flaws. We will gain far more from fundamental quality-improvements than we will from whack-a-mole-ing on this symptom.

    by Terr_
  • No, your paranoia-outage is the true "national security threat" - a threat to freedom. Stop fanning the flames and calling for more government intervention.
    by userbinator