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Scam-Linked ISP Intercage / Atrivo Gets Shut Out
Posted by
timothy
on Tue Sep 23, 2008 11:53 AM
from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out dept.
from the don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out dept.
alphadogg writes with this excerpt from Network World: "The lifeline linking notorious service provider Intercage to the rest of the Internet has been severed. Intercage, which has also done business under the name Atrivo, was knocked offline late Saturday night when the last upstream provider connecting it to the Internet's backbone, Pacific Internet Exchange, terminated Intercage's service. Intercage president Emil Kacperski said Pacific did not tell him why his company had been knocked offline, but he believes it was in response to pressure from Spamhaus, a volunteer-run antispam group, which has been highly critical of Intercage's business practices."
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CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."
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So, a drop of spam-traffic? (Score:4, Insightful)
For a couple of hours?
Re:So, a drop of spam-traffic? (Score:5, Informative)
Yup. The end of TFA was the painful (albeit obvious) part:
Kacperski said Monday he was looking for a new service provider, but that he had no idea how long it will take him to get back online.
"I've got to basically start all over," he said.
Ugh. And the sad part is that, while he's scrambling to rebuild his "business", other people will be scrambling to fill in the void.
Parent
Re:So, a drop of spam-traffic? (Score:5, Funny)
I for one welcome this chance for other spam vendors to engage in a little competition. It will be a wholly new playing field if/when Intercage re-emerges online, after previously holding a dominant position. Hopefully the free-market nature of Internet business will only encourage the production of more quality spam. The recipients of spam can only benefit from this new development.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:So, a drop of spam-traffic? (Score:4, Funny)
Next thing you know `traceroute intercage.com` will look something like this:
traceroute to intercage.com (128.102.0.99), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
12 TKC-COMMUNI.hsa4.SanJose1.Level3.net (209.245.146.6) 36.243 ms 36.086 ms 36.397 ms
13 n254-border-rtr-nisn-sip.arc.nasa.gov (198.123.41.9) 36.087 ms 36.086 ms 36.403 ms
14 intercage.com (128.102.0.99) 36.432 ms 36.231 ms 36.891 ms
Parent
Re:So, a drop of spam-traffic? (Score:5, Informative)
For a couple of hours?
For a day. They found a new upstream now, though, Unitedlayer, Inc., who obviously didn't pay any attention to the news (or just decided to ignore it):
http://cidr-report.org/cgi-bin/as-report?as=AS27595 [cidr-report.org]
27595 INTERCAGE - InterCage, Inc.
Adjacency: 1 Upstream: 1 Downstream: 0
Upstream Adjacent AS list
AS23342 UNITEDLAYER - Unitedlayer, Inc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Still though one wonders how someone can be running an ISP with 78% hostile traffic and not realize something is up.
If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. ;)
That's why! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That's awesome! Just imagine all the penis enlargement pills you'll be able to order now!
Re:That's why! (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:That's why! (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I got an offer this morning of $700B, with little oversight and no accountability. All I have to do is prove that I recklessly lost hundreds of billions of investor capital.
Parent
Re:That's why! (Score:5, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia ________
The economy bails you out?
Parent
Re:That's why! (Score:5, Funny)
Nigerian Mortgage Enlargement Pills.
Parent
Spamhaus, really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some truth to it... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a good point, but when companies like AOL use Spamhaus, it means a huge number of email accounts are going to drop mail from anything in that list immediately.
So while Spamhaus does "passively" list people there, let's not fool ourselves -- when they update that list, they cause people to be blocked. If an entire ISP is blocked from communicating with most email accounts out there, then that ISP is going to feel the pressure.
Parent
Re:Some truth to it... (Score:5, Interesting)
Spamhaus was not the central issue or cause of the disconnection. If you read the article, you will see that there was a paper that was researched and published with regard to Intercage/Atrivo activities. The fact that I/A ended up on Spamhaus was simply a reflection of their activities. Not the cause of their disconnection. The network operators who each independently made a decision to not accomodate I/A traffic did so based on the merits of their own knowledge, some of which came from that paper and the rest of which came from their own experiences, and a tiny bit coming from spamhaus which, as noted elsewhere in this thread has a reputation of its own. (good and/or bad. )
Parent
Re:Spamhaus, really? (Score:4, Insightful)
While they don't do anything active, threatening to add you to their list for being the upstream of someone on their list is a little like saying "hey, nice knees. Shame if something happened to them". Enough people use Spamhaus, directly or indirectly, that being on their list can be equivalent to actively blocking them. It's not exactly a Usenet Death Penalty, but it'll cramp your style.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If a whole ISP is seen as a habitual offender and providing safe haven to unrepentant spammers, then SpamHaus will work their way upstream.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Spamhaus, and most of the other anti-spam lists, are essentially boycott organizers.
They may not do much personally, but they are advocates for action.
-- Should you believe authority without question?
Easy fix for them (Score:3, Funny)
Emil Does know why they were disconnected. (Score:4, Informative)
Email discussion about this modern version/equivalent of the "Internet Death penalty" (IDP) has been ongoing in the email list for network operators for the past several days. One side's consensus in this case seems to be "Intercage/Atrivo" has been a problem for years, has never adequately responded to abuse complaints, and is responding with a protestation of innocence that has all the credibility of 'The check is in the mail", "I'll only put it in an inch", and "of course I love you".
There is the other side of the story with protestations of innocence. Unfortunately those cries are exactly what any party, guilty or innocent, would make. How to tell the difference?
And what next?
Will more ISP's/Hosters refuse to do business with "questionable" parties? Doesn't seem likely, but we can hope. Will the IDP be used on any other parties? Will there be damage to innocent parties? There are no easy answers or ready solutions for this issue.
Re:Emil Does know why they were disconnected. (Score:5, Informative)
Will more ISP's/Hosters refuse to do business with "questionable" parties?
Some parties are always considered questionable, e.g. when they actively disrupt the Net. Those parties have always been cut-off, even in the pre-IP times: a misbehaving USENET host was quickly blacklisted and it had a very hard time to find peers. This is "technical questionability".
Other parties are sometimes considered questionable, e.g. when they provide content that is deemed questionable in some areas and cultures (say, e.g. pr0n). This is "social/cultural questionability".
Cutting someone off because of technical reasons is absolutely justifiable, because not cutting him off would disrupt the system itself. Cutting someone off because of social/cultural reasons is not necessary from a technical point of view, and is open to political debate.
Now, Net Neutrality is essentially a political (and economical) debate, and has nothing to do with the first category (technical constraints). Cutting off Intercage/Atrivo seems to me like belonging to the first category: they were actively disrupting the Net on the technical level, and they had to go. IMHO.
Parent
How is this different from net-neutrality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, for the record I am happy they are offline, but the devil's advocate in me does make me wonder about impact of this on net-neutrality.
Consider this, a bandwidth provider cuts off certain traffic because it disproves of this traffic and feels most of it is illegal and it is bad for their business.
Is it Pacific Internet Exchange cutting off access to Intercage because they believe most of the sites (70+ %) involves spam or some other illegal acvitivy?
Or is it Comcast cutting off access to P2P protocols because they believe most of it (98+ %) involves copyright infringement or some other illegal activity?
I am all for getting rid of the spam and malware, but something about this method is setting off red flags.
Or maybe I am over-thinking it.
this was long coming (Score:4, Insightful)
A bit over a week ago Brian Krebs, who writes the "Security Fix" blog in the Washington Post, went public [washingtonpost.com] with a number of allegations about Atrivo and its activities. As a result, many of Atrivo's own upstream connectivity providers disconnected them.
Re:Severs them right! (Score:5, Funny)
Nice typo in the title - very appropriate slip.
Parent