Dysphoria Botnet Compromises 296,000 IoT Devices for DDoS and Residential Proxy Operations
Brief
A Special Report has identified approximately 296,000 internet-connected devices compromised by the Dysphoria botnet, marking a major expansion of an IoT threat already associated with distributed denial-of-service attacks and residential proxy operations.
The report classifies every listed event as critical, providing affected-network operators with retrospective data to identify and remediate exposed devices.
Dysphoria primarily targets internet-facing IoT systems, including routers, cameras, gateways, DVRs, and other embedded Linux devices.
Earlier variants focused on building a DDoS-capable botnet, while newer versions also convert victims into relay infrastructure that can carry attacker-controlled traffic.
Researchers have observed a relay-only variant that removes DDoS functionality and instead turns compromised hosts into proxy nodes.