Vast botnet hijacks smart TVs for prime-time cybercrime

Researchers exposed an eight-year-old cybercrime syndicate dubbed Bigpanzi running the pandoraspear IoT botnet that has infected Android-based smart TVs and set-top boxes via pirated apps and firmware updates; the botnet incorporates Mirai-derived DDoS vectors, enabled at least ~170,000 active bots at peak, has been used to hijack broadcast streams (including a December 2023 UAE incident), and continues to evolve with limited researcher visibility due to attacker countermeasures.