AFRINIC IP Block Thefts -- The Saga Continues

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

South African tech journalist Jan Vermeulen has written a new chapter
in this ongoing saga of greed, theft, and skulduggery.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Maikel Uerlings and Elad Cohen registered a bunch of
new domain names as part of their overall scheme to steal AFRINIC legacy
blocks by fiddling the AFRINIC WHOIS records for the contact persons for
each legacy block that they wanted to steal. The domain names themselves
were deliberately chosen and tailored to try to minimize suspicion
relating to their numerous legacy block thefts.

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/security/367188-the-great-african-ip-address-heist-south-african-internet-resources-worth-r558-million-usurped-with-shady-domains.html

How exactly these two gentlemen managed to gain the kind of read/write
access to the AFRINIC WHOIS data base which allowed them to fiddle so
many WHOIS records for so many AFRINIC legacy IPv4 blocks is something
that AFRINIC has yet to offer any explanation for, even a full year
after these thefts came to light.

NOTE: As of the present moment AFRINIC is *still* delegating authority
for reverse DNS for many of the stolen legacy blocks detailed in Jan's
most recent article to name servers that are owned and controled by
Maikel Uerlings and/or Elad Cohen. In particular, Uerlings and/or Cohen
are still in control of the reverse DNS for all of the stolen legacy
blocks listed in the table below, as well as the reverse DNS for the
very valuable 196.16.0.0/14 block, worth well over $5 million USD.

There is no reasonable excuse for this ongoing inaction by AFRINIC. As
things stand, it appears that AFRINIC is still refusing to do even the
minimum amount necessary to stop the profiteering of Uerlings and Cohen,
EVEN THOUGH every additional dollar, every additional sheckel, and every
additional ruble that they earn from these ongoing thefts is being used
to fund Cohen's ongoing lawsuit against AFRINIC.

AFRINIC has known about these legacy block thefts for well over a year
now, and yet in all this time AFRINIC has done absolutely nothing to
remediate the fradulent entries in their WHOIS data base, or to remove
the reverse DNS relegations for the 196.16.0.0/14 block and the several
stolen blocks listed below. Reasonable people can and should ask why.

One theory, currently circulating among people I know is that Mr. Uerlings
and/or Mr. Cohen are in possession of some confidential information that
AFRINIC really hopes will never see the light of day, and that AFRINIC
is being blackmailed into inaction. Whatever the reason, AFRINIC's
continuing inaction is effectively providing funding for Mr. Cohen's
ongoing lawsuit against AFRINIC. How this makes any sense at all is
something that remains for AFRINIC to explain.

2

That’s it, the defamation gone too far, I’m not going to wait until I will win the legal proceedings against AfriNIC, I’m going to start legal proceedings against Ronald Guilmette, Jan Vermeulen (and MyBroadband) now.

Please forgive me, for not doing it before and letting Ronald Guilmette spam Nanog and other mailing lists with his pores of lies, the illegal anonymous community Ops-Trust definitely know how to keep anyone that they would like busy, besides me being out of hospital in the end of last year and needed months for recovery.

Anyone that is interested to receive any answer from me, please email me directly, I will say that Ronald Guilmette is intentionally spreading lies, and for the sake of Nanog community I will not reply to him over and over in the same coin, I was gladly interested in the past to share all the information (including AfriNIC legal proceedings) with a person respected by the Nanog community (and I’m still interested to do so today), such as William Herrin, or to anyone else respected by the Nanog community.

Now, if any Ops-Trust community member (https://portal.ops-trust.net/) will want to try to had “proofless credibility” to Ronald Guilmette filthy pores of imagination (like “anyone with half brain will believe Ronald Guilmette” or “Cohen is sitting with impunity in Israel”) - go ahead, it doesn’t change the fact that you will do it without a single proof and that you are a mob of criminals, accepting new Ops-Trust community members only base on vouching and they share illegal private data secretly in their platform, according to Ops-Trust community private presentations:

https://www.docdroid.net/xfaKhhY/f41lf3st2015-trident-toothed-and-pronged-pdf

https://www.docdroid.net/xqTWVQW/first-2014-vixie-paul-op-sec-trust-pdf

And if anyone in Nanog is interested in meaningless things such as: “truth”, “facts” and “data”:

AfriNIC over a period of years, received more than 44 email notifications to their central email address (hostmaster@afrinic.net , due to the “notify:” attribute value and to the “–list-versions” output) regarding to updates that they themsleves made to legacy netblocks that I purchased legally, in what AfriNIC and Ronald Guillmette and Jan Vermeulen are calling “misappropriation”. If anyone can explain that to me I will be thankful.

One more thing I would like to add, Ronald Guilmette is the lawless one according to old scriptures, Ronald Guilmette match one by one to the description of the lawless one in old scriptures:

  • Ronald is blond.
  • Ronald is bald.
  • Ronald’s one eye is bigger than the other.
  • Ronald’s one arm is bigger than the other.
  • Ronald have leprosy in his forehead.
  • Ronald’s right ear is blocked and the left ear is opened. (it is written in old scriptures: that when a person is coming to him to tell good things about people he gives him the blocked right ear, and when a person is coming to him to tell bad things about people he gives him the opened left ear).

Ronald, will you show us a picture and a health report to prove that you are not the lawless one? Let me summarize: you will not do it.

Do you know what are the motives of the lawless one? Deception and lies, like our pore-spilling friend, Ronald here.

Ronald, and an additional personal note to you, you are a very very misery person, that have nothing and no one in your life, besides your pores, and you are defaming me and writing lies only for the attention, to feel “needed”, to receive the “likeness” of people that don’t have any courage to write defamation lies by themselves and are just using you, go get help and the sooner the better.

3

Anyone that is interested to receive any answer from me, please email me directly, I will say that Ronald Guilmette is intentionally spreading lies, and for the sake of Nanog community I will not reply to him over and over in the same coin, I was gladly interested in the past to share all the information (including AfriNIC legal proceedings) with a person respected by the Nanog community (and I'm still interested to do so today), such as William Herrin, or to anyone else respected by the Nanog community.

Ugh. I don't suppose I can gracefully decline this honor?

legacy netblocks that I purchased legally, in what AfriNIC and Ronald Guillmette and Jan Vermeulen are calling "misappropriation". If anyone can explain that to me I will be thankful.
Ronald Guilmette match one by one to the description of the lawless one in old scriptures:

If AfriNIC says your "purchases" are misappropriation you'll have to
do a lot better than conspiracy theories and phrenology in counter
argument.

You could probably have picked a better venue for it too, one whose
participants aren't presently being treated to an exhausting quantity
of whack-job conspiracy theories every time they turn on the news.
You'll find us predisposed to believe the peddler of a conspiracy
theory to be a fool.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

P.S. Ronald, I know you've been spoken to about ad hominem attacks.
You could have stopped after the first two paragraphs and the link.
Your screed and faux questions about what crooks you thought these
folks to be added exactly nothing to the conversation you hoped to
start.

5

I would like to formally request that Mr. Cohen’s privileges to post to this list be revoked, or otherwise curtailed.

It’s one thing to dispute facts with evidence, or generally disagree on a topic. However , threats of legal action and personal attacks citing Old Testament mumbo jumbo, while creative, provide no value to the community.

As Mr. Herrin stated well, we are all swimming in enough nutter butter conspiracy theory nonsense every day. I hope we don’t normalize it here too.

6

Tom,

Until today all I wrote was facts and evidence, in the contrary to Pore-spilling Ronald. When Ronald keeps defaming me here non-stop, Yes my full right is to sue him, even if you prefer that my blood will be shed here by his filthy soul and pores. And you can be sure that I will respond to any of his defamation messages.

“No value to the community” - there is value to the community, anyone which is following Pore-spilling Ronald is following the ancient snake, it is not written in Old Testament, it is written in Old Scripture, go ahead and check, Ronald visual appearance match one by one to the lawless one description (lawless one is a term of New Testament) according to Old Scripture.

Go swim in Ronald juicy pores if you would like.

7

I’ve done the simple thing: I’ve blocked all emails with the keyword AFRINIC in them. I’m not willing to let my inbox be swamped with another deluge of “pore spilling” (whatever that is) vitriol.

-mel beckman

8

“Pore-spilling” is the daily care of Ronald to his filthy smelly rotten pores.

Ronald, please feel free to explain more.

9

If you don’t have coherent argument, take Trump’s approach with an incoherent ad-hominem attack.

I have been filling this issue with a lot of interest, and to date you have offered no evidence of anything, apart from your ability to spew vitriol.

10

+1

Several months ago, Elad Cohen went on record claiming that I was secretly "Rob Shultz" from Spamhaus - an outrageous lie. (Spamhaus is actually my competitor... and I've only ever known a few people there - and not even that well.) What I had to do to (somewhat!) clear my name - so that the average person who doesn't know me could tell with a high degree of certainty that Elad Cohen lies about me weren't true - took away many hours out of my life and got me in trouble with maawg for discussing too many details about the people at maawg events whom I had interacted with (to show that me and this other Rob couldn't possibly be the same person). Note that I barely know "Rob Shultz", and hadn't even heard of "Rob Shultz" until AFTER I saw Cohen's accusation. I don't think that "Rob Shultz" is a bad person at all - from what little I know about him - but these accusations could potentially cause frustration/confusion in the niche market served by both invaluement (my company) and Spamhaus. The way Elad Cohen pushes ludicrous/unfounded conspiracy theories that are easily proven false - makes me question his mental heath. Ironically, at the same time, I'm actually somewhat of an *EXTREMIST* when it comes to free-speech and the free flow of ideas. I absolutely hate it when others shut down opposing ideas due to being "offended". But what makes this case DIFFERENT - is that I draw a line at slander/libel. I gave Elad Cohen every opportunity to prove his accusations - and he wasn't able to. And, again, what I had to explain about my meetings with people (aka "witnesses") at maawg - to prove that Elad was lying - caused me irreparable damage with maawg. His slander/libel is damaging to others. He doesn't add any value (at least, none that I can find) - he only harms other people in malicous ways.

11

NANOG Staff member that is granted the privilege of reading the list and ensuring all folks adhere to the Usage Guidelines of the list here…

Note this thread is not in the spirit of the guidelines for operational and technical content discussion. +1’s, here-here’s, and the back and forth mudslinging are not the type of lively discussions this list is in existence for.

If you feel this message is in error, please reach out to admins@nanog.org to discuss. This message is being sent based on guideline 15: The Mailing List is not an appropriate platform to resolve personal issues, engage in disputes, or file complaints.

Cheers,

Valerie

Valerie Wittkop - NANOG Program Director
305 E. Eisenhower Pkwy, Suite 100, Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Tel: +1 866 902 1336, ext 103

12

DELIBERATE TOP POST

It would be helpful to the NANOG list if posters could try to follow posting guidelines and discuss technical (not personal) topics.

14

OK.. I'll probably end up regretting this, but...

Is there any actual independently verifiable proof that legal proceeding have been started?

15

In the old days on the NANAE newsgroup, such bogus threats of legal action were categorized as one calling their "cartooney". People who huff and puff and threaten to sue rarely do so. If someone actually plans on suing you, your first hint is typically a knock on the door by a process server, not repeated threats in an online forum.

16

Right. The thing is that unless you're party to the lawsuit, you don't
know if a process server has been involved.

Somebody else replied by private email and pointed where the AfriNIC
CEO wrote that they had, in fact, actually been sued. So whatever one
might think of Elad Cohen, he's apparently not a cartooney.

17

Any idea of the outcome?

18

NANOG Staff member that is granted the privilege of reading the list and ensuring all folks adhere to the Usage Guidelines of the list here…

For the second time I am writing to remind you all this thread is not in the spirit of the guidelines for operational and technical content discussion.

Stop posting on this thread. A message was sent on Monday stating it is off topic and should be dropped.

If you continue to post on this thread, your subscription will be placed under moderation.

Valerie

Valerie Wittkop - NANOG Program Director
305 E. Eisenhower Pkwy, Suite 100, Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Tel: +1 866 902 1336, ext 103