I would not be surprised if the various cyber-warfare teams for government players have contingency plans in place for doing exactly what you describe. Except they might have more strategic plans in mind than merely bricking the owned devices.
I wonder if there might already be sleeper code in place for this purpose?
Botnet zombies seems to be the most obvious use-case, though. Or create your own TOR-type network to obscure the origin of criminal activity.
With sufficient density of vulnerable devices, you could setup your own mesh network to send your nefarious packets through someone else's Internet gateway miles away.
I wonder if there might already be sleeper code in place for this purpose?
Botnet zombies seems to be the most obvious use-case, though. Or create your own TOR-type network to obscure the origin of criminal activity.
With sufficient density of vulnerable devices, you could setup your own mesh network to send your nefarious packets through someone else's Internet gateway miles away.