Hello,
I want to alert you everyone on the maillist regarding ip block
160.116.0.0/16, the block was announced by HE and XO previously (in my
own routing table it is not showing right now) so these organizations are
probably aware of the unsolicited emails that were coming out of this
block and chose to not announce it any more. I'm hoping other organizations
that maybe approaced to announce the block would be alerted by this email and
not let it show up on tne net again.
I'm also trying to find out more about if this block is really hijacked or
not. The address listed in ARIN database is "P.O. Box 261333, Excom, South
Africa" and as far as I can tell this address is the one that was used
originally (at least as of 1994) and when block first appeared on the net,
it was announced through AS1957. I also tracked that network in ARIN
database was originally named "Affiliated Computing Services--Uninet
Project" which means it had some associated with UNINET which is/was
South Africa's education/university network (www.tenet.ac.za) kind of like
NSFNET was in US as far as I can remember. As far as I can see most
of other organizations associated with uninet are being announced through
AS3741 (this includes blocks 160.114.0.0/16, 160.115.0.0/16, 160.118.0.0/16,
and many of the of the blocks from 196.11.0.0/16). Uninet/Tenet itself is
using ip block 196.21.0.0/16 and several others and these are and announced
through AS2018 (and none of these are AS## 1228 - 1332 which are the as#
in arin records for uninet, anyway its probably just historical records).
I can not find any information about original domain that organization
that had this block may have had but currently it seems to be
affiliatedcomputing.com and record is pointing to the same address
as arin block but I can not confirm if it was this way originally or if
the domain was reregistered (but I'm sure whoever controls the domain
now is involved in unsolicited email).
Now if anybody is here from South Africa, possibly UNINET/TENET or somebody
associated with AS1957 or AS3741 and knows anything about this block
please reply and if something wrong did happen as far as ARIN records, we
need to let them know.
Also I found some records that indicate that 160.116.0.0/16 had something
to do with eskom.co.za and that organization's physical address is/was
located in Johanesburg.
I think it would be best if somebody emails me info on AfriNOG or
associated mailing list and I'll ask this question there, probably more
likely to find somebody there who knows what was going on so long ago...
Though its strange to reply to my own email for 2nd time ...
But some importaint info I did not notice - apperently parts of 160.116.0.0
are still being announce through XO and Internap/Global Crossing with
actual announcements coming from AS8143. Even more interesting it appears
smaller blocks from that /16 are announced (/19) and it appears email
comes from particular ip and then the block which was announced before is
announced no longer and they move to announcing another subblock with
emails coming from there!
In any case, this calls for active blocking of this /16 from anybody who
does not want to provide services to spammers and ip hijackers.
As for XO and Internap, (I'm sure somebody is here from these companies) -
take notice and get rid of this customer!!!
Also UUNET take notice too - AS8143 is announcing number of other blocks
though your network and I have serious suspicions the ASN itself is
hijacked (its registered to Publicom Corp, Miami, but domain 4publicom.com
has been reregistered and it has some invalid whois info; in addition
number of other announcements from 8143 are also suspicious).
And for the record here is some of what I'm seeing from 8143:
*>i63.89.167.0/24 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
*>i63.109.72.0/24 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
*>i63.109.79.0/24 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
*>i134.33.0.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 3549 10910
10910 10910 10910 10910 10910 8143 i
*>i160.116.16.0/24 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 2828 8143
*>i160.116.160.0/19 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 2828 8143
*>i160.116.224.0/19 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 3549 10910
10910 10910 10910 10910 10910 8143 i
*>i162.73.128.0/19 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 3549 10910
10910 10910 10910 10910 10910 8143 i
*>i204.179.64.0/20 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143 8143
*>i207.243.145.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
*>i208.168.213.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 7018 8143
*>i208.168.215.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 7018 8143
*>i208.238.44.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
*>i208.238.45.0 209.144.160.89 100 10 6347 701 8143
Hi
Now if anybody is here from South Africa, possibly UNINET/TENET or somebody
associated with AS1957 or AS3741 and knows anything about this block
please reply and if something wrong did happen as far as ARIN records, we
need to let them know.
many moons ago there were a bunch of large blocks which were assigned to
Uninet. These ended up as a rather large swamp. Uninet has however been
busy trying to clean up the info for these (see www.tenet.ac.za). I see
the record was updated in feb this year. There are afaik a few ppl from
3741 on this list, so perhaps they'd know more (if it was a downstream of
theirs actually using the space). I'll bounce a mail to the Tenet people
and see if they can assist.
Regards
--Rob
(Replying to myself yet again....)
I finally tracked this network down to original domain acs.co.za (which
has been reregistered a few times since long ago), the connection you can
see at: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/E_Mail/E_Mail_10674.html
Best I can tell is that this was somehow affiliated with webfeat.co.za:
http://co.za/cgi-bin/whatelse.sh?File=acs.3
which is no longer in business it seems, I'm going to ask people at is.co.za
(who were providing original network services to webfeat in 1996) to see
if they have any historic info on what happened and if they confirm company is
not in business I'll ask them to mail it to ARIN.
But since I know couple people from ARIN are already on this list and
listining it'd be good ARIN were little more proactive and did its own
investigation on updates done to this block. Right now I have no conculsive
evidence that affiliatedcomputing.com has no connection to the block but
from what you can see above this seems likely.
And right now nowaffiliatedcomputing.com is completely under control of
large Florida spam gang, some info on that can be found at:
http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl/sbl.lasso?query=SBL6949
And you can see previous affiliation to advistechsa.com (remember my
previous post that VMX INC block 157.156.0.0/16 that is probably supposed
to be Lucent block now? Well vmxnetworks was their upstream!).
Spews has a lot of info on that gang:
http://www.spews.org/html/S367.html
http://www.spews.org/html/S2425.html (publicom!)
Besides that it seems publicom which is possibly same as networktron
has long history of spamming and ip block hijacking back from 1999
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=networldtron
Networldtron is the company for which most of the ip blocks which I listed
as announced by AS8143 are swipped to at ARIN database. Their main domain
networldtron.net is now expired and inactive (if you do whois on it you'll
find connection to publicom yet again). But ntwt.net is active and has
been taken over by company called Naronda with domain naronda.com - be on
the lookout for such a client who maybe spammer and hijacker!
Hi
I've spoken with Dr Duncan Martin, who currently administers Tenet.
He didn't have any record of 160.116 being previously managed by Tenet
(old Uninet in a way) but has forwarded your first post which I sent him
to the gentleman who ran Uninet for many years before him. He said he'd
let me know if he found anything out.
Regards
--Rob
Since clearing up the "Trafalgar House" hijacks, several people have
written me pointing out an even larger number of probably-hijacked
blocks that they think should be investigated. I've researched what
I can, and drawn the attention of ARIN, and the relevant upstreams,
to BGP announcements that research suggests may be inappropriate.
What I have avoided doing is reporting all the gory details here,
except where there was some specific relevance in doing so.
I have, as promised, set up the mailing list - hijacked@numbering.com
for reports and evaluation of likely incidents of IP block hijacking,
and if the outcome of any evaluation is that hijacking is confirmed,
the details can be sent to the upstreams and ARIN for consideration.
I would hope that ARIN and the major networks will want to join that
list and follow the discussions there anyway.
That list is now open; initial requests have been added manually, and
anyone else who wishes to join will need to send the usual incantation
to majordomo@numbering.com and then respond to the email challenge.
To avoid misunderstanding can I say very clearly that the "hijacked"
list will not be discussing any aspect of ARIN's (or indeed any other
registries') procedure or policies: such matters are more appropriate
to the individual policy fora of each registry/community.
At Matthew Sullivan's kind suggestion, a DNS-BL of confirmed hijacked
IP blocks is now live and available as a separate specific zone within
the SORBS project; details at http://www.dnsbl.sorbs.net Networks can
therefore prevent abuse from hijacked netblocks by using SORBS' DNSBL.
Richard Cox
> In any case, this calls for active blocking of this /16 from anybody
> who does not want to provide services to spammers and ip hijackers.
> As for XO and Internap, (I'm sure somebody is here from these
> companies) - take notice and get rid of this customer!!!
Since clearing up the "Trafalgar House" hijacks, several people have
written me pointing out an even larger number of probably-hijacked
blocks that they think should be investigated. I've researched what
I can, and drawn the attention of ARIN, and the relevant upstreams,
to BGP announcements that research suggests may be inappropriate.
What I have avoided doing is reporting all the gory details here,
except where there was some specific relevance in doing so.
I agree with this, but I could not go any futher on the South African
block, needed help from somebody local to find out what company the block
should belong now. But on my own I also did research on two other blocks
hijacked by "Naronda/Publicom Gang" and announced through AS8143 -
162.73.0.0/16 and 134.33.0.0/16. Owners of both of the blocks have been
definetly identified (a lot more certain there then for 160.116.0.0/16
block) and I've sent reports to these companies and to ARIN.
Based on these and other information, XO yesterday has stopped announcement
from AS8143 on ther network. Only Internap remains, but I'v been completely
unsussfull on getting ANY response from their abuse team. As such I've
focused on Internap upstreams - Verio and Global Crossing. Verio is more
responsive and has already received all necessary information and will
probably shut down their announcements after reviewing that, Global Crossing
security team still has not responded back to me though, I'm however still
hopefull that by tomorrow both Verio and Global Crossing will shut down
the hijacked block announcements through their networks.
I have, as promised, set up the mailing list - hijacked@numbering.com
for reports and evaluation of likely incidents of IP block hijacking,
and if the outcome of any evaluation is that hijacking is confirmed,
the details can be sent to the upstreams and ARIN for consideration.
I would hope that ARIN and the major networks will want to join that
list and follow the discussions there anyway.
Great, I'll work with others on that list now.
And if anybody is interested in seeing details on findings on who the
blocks hijacked by Naronda/Publicom Gang belong too, I'll post information
on that mailing list shortly.