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This VPN Lets Anyone Use Your Internet Connection. What Could Go Wrong?


A free VPN app called Big Mama is selling access to people’s home internet networks. Kids are using it to cheat in a VR game while researchers warn of bigger security risks.

Researchers at cybersecurity company Trend Micro first spotted Meta’s VR headsets appearing in its threat intelligence residential proxy data earlier this year, before tracking down that teenagers were using Big Mama to play Gorilla Tag. Proxies can “allow people with malicious intent to use your internet connection to potentially use it for their attacks, meaning that your device and your home IP address may be involved in a cyberattack against a corporation or a nation state,” Hilt says. At the other end of the scale, according to Orange’s research, residential proxy networks have broadly been used for cyber espionage by Russian hackers, in social engineering efforts, as part of DDoS attacks, phishing, botnets, and more.

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