Researchers at XLab have documented a previously unknown botnet called AryStinger that has taken over more than 4,000 outdated routers, mostly D-Link DIR-850L and DIR-818LW models, and turned them into proxies for malicious traffic. It spreads by exploiting old, unpatched vulnerabilities and can scan networks, tunnel and proxy traffic, run commands, and tamper with DNS settings to hijack users' browsing. A more advanced Go-based variant targets NAS devices and adds internal network reconnaissance using open-source pentest tools. Infections cluster in South Korea and China but reach Sweden and Southeast Asia too. The compromised devices are end-of-life and will not receive fixes.
Lumen's Black Lotus Labs warns that JDY, a covert botnet tied to Chinese state-linked groups including Volt Typhoon, has more than doubled to over 1,500 hacked home and small-office routers, firewalls, and IoT devices. Unlike a DDoS botnet, JDY is a distributed scanning network: it fingerprints exposed services across the internet and flags systems vulnerable to newly disclosed bugs, often within hours of disclosure. It keeps a heavy focus on the US, especially military and associated networks, and survived the 2024 FBI takedown of its parent KV-botnet. Because traffic comes from thousands of ordinary residential IPs, simple IP blocking does not stop it.
Brian Krebs published an investigation showing that Huge Networks, a Brazilian DDoS protection firm, has been running the Mirai-based botnet behind a years-long DDoS campaign against other Brazilian ISPs. An exposed open directory revealed Portuguese-language Python attack scripts that relied on the personal SSH keys of Huge Networks CEO Erick Nascimento. The botnet ran on compromised TP-Link Archer AX21 routers and unmanaged DNS servers, attacking Brazilian IP prefixes for 10-60 seconds at a time. Nascimento says a January 2026 intrusion compromised his SSH keys; he denies running the attacks. ISPs say the attacks have been ongoing since December 2024.
Akamai's Security Intelligence and Response Team caught a Mirai variant actively exploiting CVE-2025-29635, a command-injection flaw in discontinued D-Link DIR-823X routers, roughly one year after the vulnerability was publicly disclosed and its proof-of-concept exploit posted to GitHub (and later removed). The flaw lives in the sub_42232C function of the router firmware, where an attacker-controlled macaddr field is copied into a command buffer via snprintf and passed to system() without validation, enabling remote command execution through a crafted POST to /goform/set_prohibiting. Firmware versions 240126 and 24082 are affected. D-Link retired the DIR-823X line in 2025, so there is no vendor patch and no vendor patch coming. The Mirai variant, called 'tuxnokill' by its authors, drops from 88.214.20[.]14 via a simple shell script, supports multiple CPU architectures, uses XOR key 0x30 to obfuscate strings, and phones home to 64.89.161[.]130 on TCP port 44300. The same operator is chaining D-Link alongside CVE-2023-1389 (TP-Link AX21) and a ZTE ZXV10 H108L RCE, giving them a diverse pool of end-of-life consumer routers to enslave. At the time Akamai reported, CVE-2025-29635 was not yet on the CISA KEV catalog. The lesson: public PoCs against dead hardware do not stay dormant forever, and the 'wait for active exploitation' instinct gives attackers a year's head start.
TrustStrike Labs