// THE VERGE — MOBILE & WEB
Just about anyone can rent access to White House IP addresses
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Security researchers discovered residential proxy activity on the White House’s network.
Security researchers discovered residential proxy activity on the White House’s network.
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Someone at the White House appears to be running software that could enable outsiders to rent access on the presidential network for just “a few dollars,” as reported by Krebs on Security and The Register. That’s according to findings from the security firms Layer3 Intel and Synthient, which discovered residential proxy activity on the White House network.
A residential proxy opens up a way for people to rent access to a home IP address and route their internet traffic through it, allowing them to conceal where their activity is actually coming from. Some apps and browser extensions include third-party software development kits (SDKs) that put proxy nodes on a user’s device — whether users know it or not. Third-party services can then sell access to the residential proxies on users’ devices.
As noted by the cybersecurity firm Spur, people can legitimately use residential proxies for purposes like ad verification and quality assurance testing, but bad actors can also use them to bypass geolocation controls and defensive filters. Hackers have used residential proxies for all kinds of malicious activity, including to create botnets and carry out account takeovers.