I'm dealing with such attack, so if you'd like, you can send me IPv4 addresses, and I'll grep my logs for them. Email address is on the website linked on my profile.
As for what you can do on your own, it really depends on your network. OpenWRT routers can run tcpdump, so you can check for suspicious connections or DNS requests, but it gets really hard to tell if you have lots of cloud-tethered devices at home. IoT, browser extensions, and smartphone applications are the usual suspects.
The most surefire way would be to put a device between your router and your ONT/modem to capture the packets and see what requests are being sent. It's not complicated but it IS a lot of information to sift through.
Your router may have the ability to log requests, but many don't, and even if yours does, if you're concerned the device may be compromised, how can you trust the logs?
BUT, with all that said, these attacks are typically not very sophisticated. Most of the time they're searching for routers at 192.168.1.1 with admin/admin as the login credentials. If you have anything else set, you're probably good from 97% of attackers (This number is entirely made up, but seriously that percentage is high). You can also check for security advisories on your model of router. If you find anything that allows remote access, assume you're compromised.
---
As a final note, it's more likely these days that the devices running these bots are IoT devices and web browsers with malicious javascript running.
> How can I detect if my router is backdoored, or being used as a residential proxy?
Aside from the obvious smoke tests (are settings changing without your knowledge? Does your router expose access logs you can check?), I'm not sure there's any general purpose way to check, but 2 things you can do are:
1. search for your router's model number to see if it's known to be vulnerable, and replace it with a brand-new reputable one if so (and don't buy it from Amazon).
2. There are vendors out there selling "residential proxy IP databases", (e.g., [1]) no idea how good they are, but if you have a stable public IP address you could check whether you're on that.
If it’s legit you can ask your ISP if they sell use of your hardware. Or just don’t use the provided hardware and instead BYO router or modem or media converter or whatever.
But I think what OP is implying is insecure hardware being infected by malware and access to that hardware sold as a service to disreputable actors. For that buy a good quality router and keep it up to date.
Issues, CI, and downloads for built binaries aren't part of vanilla Git. CI in particular can be hard if you make a multi-platform project and don't want to have to buy a new mac every few years.
There's a commercial building under construction next to my office. I look down on the construction site, and those strapping young men are digging with their big excavators they've been using for years and taking away the dirt with truck and trailer.
Why use a spade? Even those construction workers use the right sized tools. They ain't stupid.
you'd sometimes discover a city communication line destroyed in the process; or the dirt hauled on top of a hospitals, killing hundreds of orphaned kids with cancer; or kittens mixed into concrete instead of cement.
And since you clicked "agree" on that Anthropic EULA, you can't sue then for it, so you now hire 5 construction workers to constantly overlook the work.
It's still net positive... for now at least... But far from being "without any people". And it'll likely remain this way for a long time.
LLM would be equal to a monstrous moving castle with million robotic hands that can somehow collaterally extract piles of dirt from earth, doing a lot of damage to our planet
This is the right take IMO, so thanks for a balanced comment.
I would add a nuance from OPs perspective sorta: a close friend of mine works in construction, and often comments on how projects can be different. On some, everyone in the entire building supply chain can be really inspired to work on a really interesting project because of either its usefulness or its craftsmanship (the 2 of which are related), and on some, everyone’s, just trying to finish the project is cheaply quickly as possible.
It’s not that the latter hasn’t existed in tech, but it does appear that there is a way to use LLMs to do more of the latter. It’s not “the end of a craft”, but without a breakthrough (and something to check the profit incentive) it’s also not a path to utopia (like other comments seem to be implying)
Craftsmanship doesn’t die, it evolves, but the space in between can be a bit exhausting as markets fail to understand the difference at first.
I think OP is coming at this more from an artisan angle. Perhaps there were shoveler artisans who took pride in the angle of their dirt-shoveling. Those people perhaps do lament the advent of excavators. But presumably the population who find code beautiful vs the art of shoveling are of different sizes
A former academic supervisor mused it could be good for a society to see the return of diseases causing lifelong disfigurement and disability just to remind people to get vaccinated.
Personally I don't think it needs to go that far, and it's a situation entirely preventable.
Is there a term for when a problem has been solved for so long it falls out of living memory creating a natural breeding ground for people to question why the solution is even necessary, come up with nothing because the problem is so long gone, and invent conspiracy theories to fill the gap?
Nobody is scared of getting polio anymore and one person not getting vaccinated doesn't really change anything --> the fact that they're nonetheless making me get vaccinated must be because of government chips, lizardpeople, big pharma profits, etc etc.
More specific than Chesterton's fence or just history repeating itself.
Yes, though I expect there to be a European block, the US, and a Chinese block. Russia there as a wildcard. I doubt we see Germany in competition with Britain.
The trouble with thinking in terms of blocs is that they don't solve the foundational economic problem: who is the sin-eater who is trusted and willing to run the deficits so that everyone else can run surpluses? Without a clear answer, you just have the same question repeated within and between blocs, so the same beggar-thy-neighbor incentives that exist without blocs exist within and between blocs, so the fighting continues within and between blocs until the question is answered. Blocs don't solve the problem at all.
Russia firmly in that second tier along with better behaved peers that have brighter demographic futures and an actual economy, like India, Indonesia and Brazil.
The interwar era between WWI and WWII is most instructive for what a multipolar currency world looks like. The Pound Sterling still mostly worked before WWI and the Dollar rose in the wake of WWII.
The absence of a currency hegemon caused "Kindleberger problems," named after the economist who described them, and will cause them again. The big issue is that everyone wants to pump exports to pump their real economy, they can't all succeed because the world is a closed system, so they fight. First with tariffs, eventually with guns.
These Kindleberger Problems will get worse until the US gets its shit back together or China assumes the throne. Note that assuming the throne will destroy the export sector that they love so much (Triffin Dilemma), so not only are they not ready today, they don't even clearly want to be ready. Much like the US between WWI and WWII.
Buckle up, because the tariff wars, Great Depression, the economic driving force for the imperialism of Imperial Japan, and other awful things that you've heard of before all fall in the category of "Kindleberger Problems," are all downstream of not having a global currency hegemon, and are likely to rhyme with what comes next.
reply