If you find yourself researching residential proxies and captcha solvers, stop. You have crossed the line from automation into attack. The bot farm is a weapon, and like all weapons, it eventually turns on its creator.
If your smart lightbulb, baby monitor, or old router has default passwords, a worm like Mirai has likely recruited it. Your device is now a proxy in someone else's farm.
In the shadowy corners of the internet, a silent army is always on standby. These soldiers never sleep, eat, or complain. They are bots—automated software agents—and when gathered into a "bot farm," they possess the power to crash websites, swing elections, or drain bank accounts.