AI and Scrapers

Executive Summary During our investigation into Android TV and streaming applications, Qurium identified dozens of Android (APK) packages containing a software component that transformed a diverse collection of IPTV players, streaming applications, and media-related Android software into residential proxies. At first glance, the applications appeared to just offer television streaming, IPTV playback, media consumption, and related services but they also participated in a residential proxy network known as Popa. To better understand how Popa is currently used for proxying…

Less than a month after the release of Opaque Scrapers, Qurium, working with independent threat intelligence researchers including the Nokia Deepfield Emergency Response Team and Synthient, releases new findings that identify the underlying infrastructure of the scraping event to “Popa”: a residential proxy software family that turns consumer devices into Internet relay nodes.

From Chi Proxies to NetNut Limited-edition sneaker drops are highly anticipated, restricted releases from top brands like Nike, Adidas, and New Balance, often featuring collaborations with prominent athletes, artists, or fashion houses. These exclusive launches leverage intentional scarcity to drive massive cultural demand and secondary market resale value. The phenomena “Limited-edition sneaker drops” has created a strange technology market around speed, automation, and disguise. When brands such as Nike, Adidas, Supreme, Kith, Foot Locker, and Shopify-based retailers released scarce…

On May 14th, the English-language website of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) was targeted by a large-scale scraping event which generated a massive volume of automated traffic. The traffic came from approx. 1.35 million unique IP addresses, spread across more than 7,300 AS and 223 country codes. This investigation targets opaque scraping services that threatens an open Internet.