Dysphoria Botnet Turns Compromised Routers and Cameras Into DDoS Bots and C2 Relay Nodes
Brief
Dysphoria has turned a large number of everyday internet-connected devices into a potential attack network.
The botnet is linked to roughly 296,000 compromised devices, placing routers, cameras, gateways, and other connected equipment at risk of being used against targets chosen by its operators.
The scale matters because these devices often sit quietly at homes and small businesses.
Once controlled, they can generate traffic in a coordinated distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack, making a website or online service difficult to reach.
The same access can also give criminals a way to route their own traffic through an unsuspecting victim’s connection.
Analysts at Shadowserver noted the activity in a critical special report that records the compromised-device dataset.