@Natasha_Jay A conference I am speaking at later this year just announced they are banning these smart glasses. I'm glad they made that explicit, but they really shouldn't have to. IMHO, anyone who is infosec or aspires to be in this profession who is walking around a conference w/ these on needs just keep walking into a new profession.

@Natasha_Jay Finally, a technological answer to a hypothetical asked by Amazon Women on the Moon: What if women had access to a system for reviewing the past romantic behaviors of their soon-to-be date. This skit was so prescient, but I doubt they were going for that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkkyB88PtFk

@masek Yup. That explains two full boxes of adapters and power cords that I cannot bring myself to throw out or bring to Staples for recycling or whatever.

Okay, there's a Reddit thread about this scam. Apparently a lot of people are falling for this. It appears these messages may have abused some email sending trust relationships or credentials, because the phishing messages reportedly passed SPF, DKIM and DMARC tests, and the URL points to a genuine subdomain on their site that they actually use in coms.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/1vaj96n/cryptocom_phishing_scam/

@dalias it is said you can tell the quality of a tree by its fruit, and by that yardstick the fruit is primarily traffic tied to account takeover attempts, ad fraud, mass content scraping for AI projects, or outright cybercrime.

The residential proxy services enabled by these devices are sold and resold under a number of agreements, and some have multiple proxy SDKs funneling traffic. And these devices are a shitshow on security because the underlying hardware has not even basic authentication requirements.

@mo @adamshostack Well, IDK about getting accused, but your device almost certainly will at some point be leased by cybercriminals.

A couple of teasers from the story:

Bitsight found the H96 devices were either relaying residential proxy traffic or participating in ad fraud, but never both at the same time. In fact, they concluded that when these TV boxes detect an HDMI signal from an attached television — indicating the user intends to stream video content — the box is usually functioning as a residential proxy. When the TV is off, it switches back to waiting for ad fraud jobs.

Falé said the Fengwo Group’s domain shared its SSL certificate data with other domains associated with the apps found on H96 devices, specifically the phone spoofing mechanism. He noted the domain also has an internal wiki platform that directly ties the Fengwo Group to a proprietary implementation of a Google-built visual programming language called Blockly, which was originally designed to help kids learn how to write software.

According to Bitsight, the Fengwo Group’s employees use Blockly to build the sham websites, allowing low-skilled operators to drag blocks of code together in their Blockly editor — without any need to understand what the underlying code blocks do or how they work.

@adamshostack well, you probably do get to watch some shows without paying.

New, by me: Read This Before You Buy That TV Streaming Stick

Security experts have been sounding the alarm for years about the risks of using generic TV boxes that promise unlimited content streaming for a one-time fee, warning that they secretly rent the user's Internet connection out to strangers. But a groundbreaking new analysis finds these devices also routinely spoof themselves as mobile phones clicking ads on AI-generated websites as part of sprawling operation that seeks to defraud online merchants and advertising networks.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/07/read-this-before-you-buy-that-tv-streaming-stick/

Oh my. A trusted source who enabled Google's new AI feature for Gmail just received this nudge from the service today, which encouraged him as part of his suggested to-dos list to fall for a cryptocurrency scam waiting in his inbox.

IDK why, but when I saw this I was reminded of that Seinfeld episode where Kramer gets a new phone number but it's the old Moviephone number, and so he starts answering the phone and reading the listings. "Why don't you just tell me what scams to click?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XagGEi_n_ok

@molly0xfff Meant to add that I really appreciate you give away all your content for free. I still signed up to support your important work for the next year, though. Thank you.

@molly0xfff Congrats, Molly. Big fan of your work. What a great segment, and a wonderful validation.

@david_chisnall Good post. Seems like the intro to a lot more thoughts on the subject!

Thanks to AI eating the supply chain, hosting a website has gotten a LOT more expensive than in years past. One wonders what's going to happen to bajillions of small hosting companies that are profitable as long as all their equipment isn't 2-10 times more expensive than it used to be. For now, they're just passing the costs on to their customers. But my guess is the hosting industry is headed for a wave of consolidation and/or bankruptcies.

https://topsitehosters.com/blog/why-your-hosting-is-getting-more-expensive/