Residential proxies are increasingly used not only for legitimate purposes—such as AI training and secure browsing—but also by cybercriminals and state actors to obscure indicators of compromise and launch large-scale DDoS attacks. The NCSC-NL has observed a sharp rise in such abuse, making attacks harder to detect and mitigate. This presentation first explores NCSC’s research on residential proxies and consumer goods, highlighting challenges posed by residential proxy growth. It also examines the Cyber Resilience Act and how it could address vulnerabilities in consumer devices, alongside real-world cases affecting Dutch stakeholders. This presentation serves a first glance into the threat landscape of this phenomenon as well as a real life example: the Android TV box (BadBox) case. Interested to know more? The session ‘’A tale of three spammy Android TV boxes’’ will offer a technical deepdive into this subject.
