A joint operation involving Google has disrupted NetNut, a residential proxy network that gave access to millions of compromised Android devices, including smart TVs and streaming boxes.

Also known as Popa, the NetNut botnet allowed cybercriminals and espionage groups to hide behind legitimate home internet addresses when launching attacks.

According to the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG), the residential proxy botnet is estimated to comprise at least two million compromised devices.

“GTIG estimates Netnut controls at least 2 million infected devices globally (including smart TVs and streaming boxes), powered by trojanized applications and botnets like Badbox 2.0 that package proxy plugins,” Google told BleepingComputer.

Residential proxy networks work by compromising home systems and selling access to them, allowing threat actors to conceal malicious traffic by routing it through the victims’ residential IP addresses.

Typically, home devices become part of the botnet after being infected with malware that is either pre-installed before purchase or added via malicious or trojanized applications downloaded by the user.

As a result, infected consumer devices serve as exit nodes in the botnet, routing unauthorized network traffic through their residential IP addresses, which can cause the devices to be flagged as suspicious or blocked by internet service providers or online services.

Dismantling the NetNut botnet involved a coordinated effort that included Google, the FBI, Lumen Technologies, The Shadowserver Foundation, and other industry partners.

The malicious proxy service is considered one of the largest networks in the world, being used by hundreds of threat actors.

It uses multiple domains, including netnut.com, which was taken down by the FBI.

“I checked with the disruption team and confirmed .com domain was also used by them along with other domains taken down,” Mark Karayan, Communications Manager at Mandiant, told BleepingComputer.

GTIG said that in one week last month it “observed 316 distinct threat clusters using suspected NetNut exit nodes, including cybercriminal and espionage groups.”

According to the researchers, threat actors used NetNut to access their own infrastructure, conduct password-spraying attacks, and to reach victim environments.

On its part, Google disabled the accounts and services on its infrastructure that NetNut operators used for malware command-and-control (C2), thus blocking access to “critical backend infrastructure.”

The company protected users by automatically warning them and disabling infected applications using Google Play Protect, the built-in security mechanism on Android.

Additionally, Google shared technical details on NetNut’s software development kits (SDKs) and backend command-and-control (C2) infrastructure with platform providers, law enforcement agencies, and cybersecurity researchers.

Google expects disrupting NetNut to have a broader impact in the proxy industry as the botnet “has a robust reseller program that allows whitelabeling of its network” and many of the popular residential proxy services are fueled by NetNut.

Karayan told BleepingComputer that disrupting one proxy service often prompts operators to purchase replacement capacity from competing providers, turning them into a reseller.

“The proxy industry is deeply interconnected where operators constantly buy and resell each other’s botnet capacity, and Netnut is among the largest and most popular residential proxy networks in the world.”

The action against NetNut is part of Google’s commitment to dismantle residential proxy botnets and follows the disruption of IPIDEA earlier this year.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

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Looking for the most recent Wordle answer? Click here for today’s Wordle hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Wordle puzzle is a fun, tasty word, but it includes a repeated letter that is one I almost never guess. If you need a new starter word, check out our list of which letters show up the most in English words. If you need hints and the answer, read on.

Read more: New Study Reveals Wordle’s Top 10 Toughest Words of 2025

Today’s Wordle hints

Before we show you today’s Wordle answer, we’ll give you some hints. If you don’t want a spoiler, look away now.

Wordle hint No. 1: Repeats

Today’s Wordle answer has one repeated letter.

Wordle hint No. 2: Vowels

Today’s Wordle answer has two vowels.

Wordle hint No. 3: First letter

Today’s Wordle answer begins with P.

Wordle hint No. 4: Last letter

Today’s Wordle answer ends with A.

Wordle hint No. 5: Meaning

Today’s Wordle answer refers to a tasty dish consisting of dough, sauce, cheese and toppings.

TODAY’S WORDLE ANSWER

Today’s Wordle answer is PIZZA.

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle answer, July 3, No. 1840, was BATON.

Recent Wordle answers

June 29, No. 1836: CRUDE

June 30, No. 1837: PUPPY

July 1, No. 1838: DEMUR

July 2, No. 1839: MAVEN

Fitness trackers flood the market with options that range from stripped-down counters to full smartwatches loaded with apps and sensors. Many buyers end up frustrated when a device either skips the basics or piles on features that demand constant charging and attention. The Fitbit Charge 6, priced at $76 (was $160), takes a different path by sharpening the core jobs most people actually want from a wristband while adding just enough extras to feel modern and useful.

When performing intense workouts like interval training, spinning, or rowing, your heart rate will noticeably improve, and the readings will really match what a chest strap tells you, which is a huge plus. To be honest, step counts and distance estimations haven’t changed much for daily strolls, commutes, and jogging, but that’s fine because those fundamentals are what give you the confidence to utilize the data to make genuine decisions about your workout routine and downtime. Because, let’s be honest, accuracy is important because it helps you trust the data you’re looking at.

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Fitbit Charge 6 Fitness Tracker with Google Apps – Heart Rate on Exercise Equipment – 3-Month Google…

• Fitbit Charge 6 tracks key metrics from calories and Active Zone Minutes to Daily Readiness and sleep; move more with 40+ exercise modes, built-in…
• See your heart rate in real time: Just link your Charge 6 to compatible exercise machines, like treadmills, ellipticals, and more[2]; and stay…
• Tune into your body: Track your response to stress with a stress management score; learn about the quality of your sleep with a personalized nightly…

The battery life is likewise impressive, allowing for regular wear, which is what makes data valuable. Most people can get through several days of tracking, sleep monitoring, and notifications without needing to recharge. According to real-world experience, it can last anywhere from 4 to 7 days depending on screen brightness, GPS usage, and how frequently it syncs with your phone. That type of endurance makes it far easier to figure out what’s going on with your body than seeing a few sporadic days’ worth of information.

The Charge 6 is also quite comfy, so it doesn’t just sit on a shelf somewhere. The compact profile and light weight make it easy to forget it’s there during the day, and the screen is clear indoors and out. Furthermore, the reappearance of the side button makes it easier to navigate, which is far superior than how some people had been accustomed to the swipes. It also comes in two band sizes, allowing you to choose a secure but not too tight fit with no effort.

The wearable supports almost all of the common regular exercise activities you’d want to track without overwhelming you, with 40 different modes that can handle anything from a weightlifting session to a hike in the great outdoors, and it can even detect when you’re about to start a workout and begin tracking automatically. It also has built-in GPS, so you can leave your phone at home and simply track your path. Plus, you can send your heart rate data directly to the gym equipment, which is a nice touch.

The recovery and stress phases are where this truly goes beyond simply taking measures. Overnight tracking divides sleep into stages, monitors blood oxygen levels, and even detects variations in skin temperature, which can indicate disease or hormonal shifts. It also offers you an everyday stress score utilizing the EDA stuff and tells you when you’re ready to push yourself a little more or back off completely.

The “smart” features are quite modest. You’ll get phone and text alerts on your wrist, but they won’t get in the way; for Google users, there are also maps and wallet payments available if needed. You can also control your music with YouTube Music, which is useful for longer walks or commuting. None of this adds up to the Charge 6 being a mini phone, since it simply removes a host of little annoyances. The companion app does a wonderful job of keeping everything organized, with simple displays that do not overwhelm you. You may even track patterns over weeks to see if your sleep is improving or deteriorating. It will occasionally remind you to get active, which may be exactly what you need.

NASA’s shuttle has been in LA since 2012, but now it’ll have a permanent exhibit at the California Science Center.

• Comet Q’s controls iPhones remotely without installing anything on the device
• Hardware-level access survives screen locks, sleep states, and network interruptions
• One USB-C cable replaces cables normally required for traditional KVM setups

GL.iNet, the Hong Kong-based networking company behind a range of popular OpenWrt routers, has revealed the Comet Q, what it says is as the world’s first browser-based, pocket-sized remote-control device built specifically for USB-C devices, covering laptops, phones, tablets, and Mac minis.

What separates the device, also known as the GL-RMQ1, from conventional remote desktop software is that it operates at the hardware level, meaning it keeps working even when the controlled device sleeps, locks, or loses its network connection.

Artificial intelligence has proven that it can trawl the internet to retrieve information quickly for answering questions. But teaching students using AI is a harder task. The stakes are even higher when the goal is not just learning in school, but performing well on high-stakes exams like the SAT and ACT.

On the face of it, education might seem like a natural extension of large language models. If AI can replace customer support, certainly it can provide back answers just as a teacher would.

But being educated in a school is not a consumer experience. Teachers and school administrators aren’t looking for chatbots. Chatbots can hallucinate, chatbots can make mistakes. But if you hand over the instruction of a pupil to a chatbot, you can impede a student’s progress for months. Educators need the tools they use to be bullet-proof, safe, accountable, and consistent.

That’s why the creators of Smartschool, a Palo Alto-based educational technology company, decided to build their platform by starting with the problems faced by students and educators. Rather than adapting existing AI tools, they invested in building an AI tutor designed to help students truly learn and perform under pressure. That gap between a clever chatbot and a tool educators can actually trust is what Smartschool set out to close, with the SAT and ACT among the key exams it supports.

In a way, they were well prepared for the task. Smartschool was founded by three Polish entrepreneurs – Matt Masłowski, Paul Burzyński, and Kajetan Lewandowski. The trio had experience working for a variety of tech firms along with a solid education background. They also grew up in a Poland undergoing a difficult economic transition, where opportunities were limited and access to quality education was far from guaranteed.

“Coming from relatively underprivileged backgrounds, we wanted to be able to help people get great educations and make it possible to have similar stories, so long as they want to take action,” remarks Maslowski, Smartschool’s CEO. “Because if we keep the current education system as it is, when the whole world is changing so rapidly, we will have an extremely unfair and unequal society in the future,” he says.

The challenges of AI-based learning

A core observation of the Smartschool team is that generic AI systems were not designed for the realities of the classroom. This is particularly true for mathematics education, as large language models are known to hallucinate. They might jump ahead, skip steps, and reward wrong answers. These kinds of technical glitches can pose real problems for teachers and students, and certainly are responsible in part for the skepticism that now exists towards AI.

AI cannot also fit all in an educational setting. A successful platform needs to be customizable, so that it can be aligned with the curriculum and state standards, not to mention data privacy regulations.

“Most edtech tools are just wrappers around ChatGPT,” says Paul Burzyński, Smartschool’s chief product officer. “They have no understanding of what a student is actually working on in class.”

That gap between impressive AI demonstrations and practical classroom requirements is what Smartschool set out to address. Burzyński led the translation of advanced AI capabilities into classroom-ready workflows, working with teachers, students, and school districts to ensure the technology supports learning rather than distracting from it.

Mathematical reasoning

At the center of its platform is a proprietary mathematical reasoning engine developed under the product vision of Chief Product Officer Paul Burzyński and implemented by CTO Kajetan Lewandowski’s engineering team. Unlike general-purpose AI systems, Smartschool’s platform was designed specifically for real classroom conditions, combining educational workflows with advanced mathematical reasoning capabilities.

“It can evaluate handwritten student work, interpret diagrams and geometric constructions, and assess open-ended solutions,” Burzynski explains. “This is important because student learning is not limited to multiple-choice answers; it often involves showing reasoning steps and making mistakes that reveal thought processes.”

Rather than simply providing up answers like a GPT-powered Chatbot or search engine, Smartschool’s system is designed to give structured feedback that helps students improve their reasoning. The company reports that its system achieves 99.6 percent accuracy when assessing and providing feedback on high-school-level mathematics problems. The goal is not just correctness, but educational usefulness.

Under Burzyński’s product leadership, the Smartschool team designed the system for scale and classroom integration. It can be connected with existing learning management systems, curricula, and single sign-on platforms. Teachers can also assign work with one click, while student submissions are automatically graded and synced with gradebooks. Educators receive insights into student progress and misconceptions too.

“This design ensures the technology fits into existing teaching workflows instead of forcing schools to adapt to new systems,” says Burzynski.

AI that teachers and students can trust

As CEO, Masłowski has led Smartschool’s expansion into U.S. school districts while working closely with educators and administrators to ensure the platform delivers measurable learning outcomes. Alongside Burzynski and Lewandowski, he has helped demonstrate the reliability of the system to schools adopting AI-powered learning tools for the first time. But educators have caught on, encouraged by early success stories. Smartschool now operates in 30 US school districts, including within the New York City Department of Education and in Boston Public Schools. And there are measurable results. A study from the Learning Experience Design Research Institute found that 90 percent of students using the platform in Wisconsin’s Pewaukee School District met or exceeded math standards, for example.

Investors, and the media, have also taken note. The company in April raised $3 million in seed funding from private angels Mati Staniszewski (ElevenLabs), Marcin Żukowski (Snowflake), and Nick Woods (HazelHealth), as well as Inovo VC, the a16z Scout Fund, and The Explorer Fund. Several investors were early supporters of the team. Both Masłowski and Burzyński have also been recognized in Forbes 30 Under 30.

According to Maslowski, while it takes time to build trust in a market as conservative as edtech, the kinds of relationships the company is building, based on its experience and knowhow, should be in place for the long term. “Since the beginning, our focus has remained consistent,” he says. “We want to build AI that teachers can trust and that improves real educational outcomes in classrooms.“