Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

jacob.gold

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 100 posts

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#51

Post by quotemstr »

If I own a computer, I should be able to run whatever damn software I want on it, including software that provides a network proxy to others. (N.B. a smart TV is a computer I own.)

Yes, yes, we should fight deceptive software that doesn't disclose it has a proxy function. Fine. But there's no way to square 1) fighting all residential proxies, including ones run with informed consent and 2) preserving the public's access to general-purpose compute at home.

I'd rather live with the proxies than for someone to tell me that if I run squid, I'm damaging national security.

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#53

Post by ButlerianJihad »

quotemstr wrote: post #51

If I own a computer, I should be able to run whatever damn software I want on it, including software that provides a network proxy to others. (N.B. a smart TV is a computer I own.) Yes, yes, we should fight deceptive software that doesn't disclose it has a proxy function. Fine. But there's no way to square 1) fighting all residential proxies, including ones run with informed consent and 2) preserving the public's acc…

Very well: your ISPs, telecomm providers, and cloud services also own computers, and they should be able to run whatever they want on the devices they own, and they choose to block all your traffic, block all traffic destined for your premises, and flag your hardware IDs in certain databases, which is software they choose to run because they own the servers.

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#54

Post by bsder »

The "solution" is to shoot CGNAT and to finally force the ISPs to adopt IPv6 so everybody can drop the addresses of a detected residential proxy into a ban list.

Continuing to allow CGNAT is what allows the residential proxies to hide because it tumbles the IP identity of bad actors with normal people.

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#55

Post by quotemstr »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #53
quotemstr wrote: post #51

If I own a computer, I should be able to run whatever damn software I want on it, including software that provides a network proxy to others. (N.B. a smart TV is a computer I own.) Yes, yes, we should fight deceptive software that doesn't disclose it has a proxy function. Fine. But there's no way to square 1) fighting all residential proxies, including ones run with informed consent and 2) preserving the public's acc…

Very well: your ISPs, telecomm providers, and cloud services also own computers, and they should be able to run whatever they want on the devices they own, and they choose to block all your traffic, block all traffic destined for your premises, and flag your hardware IDs in certain databases, which is software they choose to run because they own the servers.

How do their servers know I'm running a proxy, exactly?

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#56

Post by bharatsuthar »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #45

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/t…

This is just the largest residential proxy provider BrightData(previously Luminati that used a free VPN to source residential bandwidth)

The overall residential proxy market is too large and often undetected by intelligence tools. BrightData is actually much more compliant and malicious actors wouldn't be allowed access. They have an extensive KYC and use-case vetting process.

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#59

Post by bharatsuthar »

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #41
zdc1 wrote: post #33

Oh please. An IP address is an IP address. The whole idea that some IPs are more special than others flies in the face of net neutrality.

Disagree fairly strongly. IP addresses known to be malicious are unequal and should be treated as such. Just because the idea of net neutrality exists doesn't mean it's true. I'm sure there's a specific context for it, and 'security' is not that context. It was about data/packet prioritisation wasn't it? Unrelated to security.

Yeah, mail server IP reputation is a good example. I wouldn't want to be flooded by emails from spammy mailservers IPs and I'm glad that my provider de-priortizes them.

Re: Residential Proxies Are a National Security Threat

#60

Post by akoboldfrying »

fnord77 wrote: post #48
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies for the double post, but I've got an alternate perspective: Do you allow the data you've scraped to be scraped? Do you share it as freely as you desire the 'companies that want to hide it' would? Or do you consider the scraped data is 'hard earned reward for effort' and therefore has value that others should subscribe to your service for?

data wants to be free

What's your online banking password?
Post reply on HN