{"id":208167,"date":"2026-01-30T10:28:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T10:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T15:35:07","slug":"9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network\/","title":{"rendered":"9 million Android phones were secretly hijacked by proxy network"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/3048212\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network.html\">9 million Android phones were secretly hijacked by proxy network<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/3048212\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network.html\">https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/3048212\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-01-30 10:28:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.pcworld.com\">www.pcworld.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span>Summary created by Smart Answers AI<\/span><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"miso-summary-title\" id=\"in-summary\">In summary:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>PCWorld reports that Google disrupted IPIDEA\u2019s massive proxy network, which secretly hijacked 9 million Android phones through hidden SDKs in free apps.<\/li>\n<li>The Chinese company exploited these devices as gateways for data distribution and concealing criminal activities, including DDoS attacks via the Kimwolf botnet.<\/li>\n<li>Google obtained a federal court order to shut down IPIDEA\u2019s operations, protecting millions of users from further device misuse and security breaches.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Google recently announced in a statement that it has disrupted the \u201cworld\u2019s largest residential proxy network.\u201d It was able to remain undetected for a long time, hijacking innocent users\u2019 private devices (including smartphones, PCs, and smart home devices) and using them as gateways for distributing data.<\/p>\n<p>The company explains that a Chinese company called IPIDEA was behind it and, with the help of a US federal court order, Google was able to shut down several websites and backend systems, thereby preventing the network from continuing to operate.<\/p>\n<p>In short, a proxy server is like a relay that forwards requests and caches data. For example, suppose an attacker wants to launch a DDoS attack. Instead of attacking with their own traceable devices, the attacker could relay the attacks through a proxy network comprised of smartphones and devices owned by others, thus concealing their own identity.<\/p>\n<p>According to Google, millions of devices belonged to IPIDEA\u2019s proxy network, including at least 9 million Android smartphones.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading  \" id=\"how-users-end-up-in-the-proxy-network\">How users end up in the proxy network<\/h2>\n<p>Most users ended up in IPIDEA\u2019s network by installing free apps, games, and desktop software that contained hidden code snippets (known as SDKs) that aren\u2019t recognized as malicious because they don\u2019t restrict the use of the device. They do, however, allow access by third parties.<\/p>\n<p>IPIDEA can therefore use these SDKs to turn an affected device into an exit node&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/3048212\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network.html\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>9 million Android phones were secretly hijacked by proxy network https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/article\/3048212\/9-million-android-phones-were-secretly-hijacked-by-proxy-network.html Publish Date: 2026-01-30 10:28:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":208168,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.pcworld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/handyspioniert.jpg?quality=50&strip=all&w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[70,57],"class_list":["post-208167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-android","tag-google","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208167"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":208169,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208167\/revisions\/208169"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}