I used to have a otterbox too, but I recently got a uag case and those are some of the most duarable cases ive ever used. The only problem is they are expensive.
TheOSINTguy
Typically whenever you hear about stuff like this, it brands like uag (urban armor gear) and otterbox.
Most of the time disabling javascript in ublock orgin works
Typically, malware is harder to run on linux due the system asking for a sudo password for anything that requires administrator privlages. There are also plenty of other factors that i dont feel like getting into
Not to also mention most malicous applications are designed for windows, not linux.
Sounds like a decent network segmentation setup. U dought that its the IOT devices because you make it sound like theres multiple types of them, so I would consider looking at your router a bit more.
One thing you can do is use a phone hotspot for trouble shooting and built off of it.
By any chance, do you know when you last updated the firmware on both the router and IOT devices? It's shockingly easy for IOT devices to get hacked and very easy to mask the data passing through.
Sounds like a bot net.
Read about desert storm
In afganistan, about rougly 1900 US soldiers were killed, wereas about 60-70000 insurgents were killed.
"proportional response"
Other then the fact that this is happening in Yeman, the US would likely issue a "proporstional" response. Take a look at when Iran almost sunk a US destroyer (I think it was a destroyer), and in return iran had half of there navy sunk in 8hr.
Edit: for those who may want more details on what happened https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis
Whenever linux has a big sercurity issue, its a big deal. whenever windows has a big security issue, its just another tuesday.
That should tell you that windows systems are targeted much more.