AS3266: BitCanal hijack factory, courtesy of Cogent, GTT, and Level3

Sometimes I see stuff that just makes me shake my head in disbelief.
Here is a good example:

    https://bgp.he.net/AS3266#_prefixes

I mean seriously, WTF?

As should be blatantly self-evident to pretty much everyone who has ever
looked at any of the Internet's innumeriable prior incidents of very
deliberately engineered IP space hijackings, all of the routes currently
being announced by AS3266 (Bitcanal, Portugal) except for the ones in
213/8 are bloody obvious hijacks. (And to their credit, even Spamhaus
has a couple of the U.S. legacy /16 blocks explicitly listed as such.)

That's 39 deliberately hijacked routes, at least going by the data
visible on bgp.he.net. But even that data from bgp.he.net dramatically
understates the case, I'm sorry to say. According to the more complete
and up-to-the-minute data that I just now fetched from RIPEstat, the real
number of hijacked routes is more on the order of 130 separate hijacked
routes for a total of 224,512 IPv4 addresses:

    https://pastebin.com/raw/Jw1my9Bb

In simpler terms, Bitcanal has made off with the rough equivalent of an
entire /14 block of IPv4 addresses that never belonged to them. (And of
course, they haven't paid a dime to anyone for any of that space.)

Of couse we could all be shocked (Shocked!) at this turn of events if
it were not for the fact that Bitcanal already has a rich, longstanding,
and sordid history of involvement with IP space hijacks. All one has to
do is google for "Bitcanal" and "hijack" to find that out. This isn't
exactly a state secret. In fact if you lookup "IP space hijacking" in
any modern Internet dictionary you'll find Mr. Joao Silveira's picture
next to the definition: https://twitter.com/bitcanal :slight_smile:

This guy Silveira has obviously decided that he is a law unto himself,
and can grab whatever IP space happens to be lying around for his own
purposes... and no need to fill out any tedious forms -or- pay any fees
for using any of this space to any of those annoying Regional Internet
Registries.

As usual, and as I have said here previously, I generally don't mind too
much when these kinds of greedy idiots decide to color outside the lines.
As long as they just confine themselves to hijacking abandoned IP blocks
belonging to banks and/or government agencies, well then it's no skin off
my nose. But when they start reselling their stolen IP space to spammers,
as Mr. Silveira is apparently in the habit of doing, then I get ticked off.
And actually, Mr. Silveira must be *exceptionally* greedy in that he is
apparently not satisfied to just sub-lease his own legitimate IP space to
snowshoe spammers, as he is clearly doing:

    https://pastebin.com/raw/5P5rnQ2y

Obviously, merely hosting snowshoe spammers in his own IP space isn't enough
to keep Mr. Silveira in the style to which he has become accustomned, so he
has to go out and rip off other people's IP space and then resell that to
spammers also.

The fact that there exists a jerk like this on the Internet isn't really
all that surprising. What I personally -do- find rather surprising is that
three companies that each outght to know better, namely Cogent, GTT, and
Level3 are collectively supplying more than 3/4ths of this guy's IPv4
connectivity, at least according to the graph displayed here:

    https://bgp.he.net/AS197426

Without the generous support of Cogent, GTT, and Level3 this dumbass
lowlife IP address space thief would be largely if not entirely toast.
So what are they waiting for? Why don't their turf this jackass? Are
they waiting for an engraved invitation or what?

As I always ask, retorically, in cases like this: Where are the grownups?

I would like everyone reading this who is a customer of Cogent, GTT, or
Level3 to try to contact these companies and ask them why they are providing
connectivity/peering to a hijacking jerk like this Silveira character.
Ask them why -you- have to endure more spam in your inbox just so that
-they- can make another one tenth of one percent profit by peering with
this hijacking, spammer-loving miscreant. I would ask them myself, but
I personally am not a direct customer of any of them, so they would all,
most probably, just tell me to go pound sand.

If you do manage to make contact, please be sure to mention all three of
Mr. Silveira's ASNs, i.e. AS42229, AS197426, and AS3266. And don't let
whoever you talk to try to weasel out of responsibility for this travesty,
e.g. by claiming that they don't know anything about what's been going on
with all those hijacks announced by AS3266, and/or that they only provide
peering for AS197426. The hijacks may all be originating from Mr. Silveira's
AS3266, but bgp.he.net makes clear that AS3266 has one, and only one peer,
i.e. Mr. Silveira's AS197426:

    https://bgp.he.net/AS3266

So basically, Cogent, GTT, and Level3 are the prime enablers of this
massive theft of IP space. (They might try to claim that BitCanal's
historical propensity to engage in hijacks is sonmething "brand new"
or at least that -they- may not have been aware of it until now, in which
case you should ask them if they have anybody on staff who is paying
attention. As noted above, it isn't as if Bitcanal just started pulling
this crap yesterday. Far from it.)

Oh! And you might also mention the fact that Spamhaus, and, I would guess,
at least a few of the oether public blacklists already have most or all of
Mr. Silveira's IP space... hijacked or otherwise... blacklisted, presumably
for good and ample cause.

As long as Cogent, GTT, and Level3 are willing to go along with this
nonsense, i.e. by selling peering to this Silveira thief, crime on
the Internet -does- pay, and the theft of other people's IP space
will continue to be rewarded rather than punished, as it should be.

If that becomes the new normal for Internet behavior, then god help us
all.

Regards,
rfg

You could ask the same about the IXPs that facilitate the reach and impact
of Bitcanal’s BGP hijacks by allowing that network on their platform:
https://bgp.he.net/AS197426#_ix

Kind regards,

Job

"we are not the internet police" right? (

In message <CACWOCC-t+wsL=rSfz-zXzXA+m-=RfRdG1eBMuyQ_DF3AurCYnQ@mail.gmail.com>,

As I always ask, retorically, in cases like this: Where are the grownups?

You could ask the same about the IXPs that facilitate the reach and impact
of Bitcanal's BGP hijacks by allowing that network on their platform:
https://bgp.he.net/AS197426#_ix

I can and I do ask that question. Indeed it would appear that at least one
such IX was persuaded, via a Spamhaus escalation last year, to appropriately
kick Mr. Silveira's ass to the curb:

    April, 2017:
    https://www.isptoday.nl/nieuws/de-cix-door-spamhaus-op-de-bon-geslingerd/
    
    DE-CIX:
       "We are in direct contact with Spamhouse regarding this, in order to
       avoid such incidents in the future, and are counting on an open and
       direct dialog with our Spamhouse colleagues."

But first things first. As I have stated, bgp.he.net shows that more than
three fourths of Mr. Silveira's connectivity is coming to him via just the
three companies I named, Cogent, GTT, and Level3. Without them, both the
financial and political burden of supporting this crook would fall onto a
motley collection of smaller and more easily influenced players... ones who
might be more easily persuaded to cease and desist from their ongoing support
of IP address space theft.

But the first step is to make it clear to the various law abiding customers
of Cogent, GTT, and Level3 that these three companies are acting irresponsibly
in their continued peering with Mr. Silveira's various ASNs, and that this
-does- negatively affect everyone, or at least everyone who has an email
inbox, and/or anyone and everyone who still believes that the formal system
of IP address allocation, as administered by the five RiRs, prevents chaos
from breaking out across the entire Internet.

Regards,
rfg

You are mistaken. Cogent and Level3 are signatories to MANRS:
https://www.manrs.org/participants/
so this clearly can't happen and you are making this up.

:slight_smile:

-Hank

Hi all,

I have heard that DE-CIX expelled BitCanal from their IXPs. One of their
guys also gave a presentation about how DE-CIX handles abuse cases:
https://ripe75.ripe.net/archives/video/103/

I don't know how other IXPs are handling such cases. Would be interesting
to know.

Best regards,
IUO

I am the guy who gave the presentation. We ask our customers to report misbehavior of peers at DE-CIX IXPs (e.g. IP hijack, ASN hijacks) to abuse@de-cix.net. We will look into reported cases and collect evidence so that we can act accordingly. So far, this process helped us to identify and fix configuration errors from peers on a few occasions. Also, as a last resort we expelled a small number of permanent and notorious rule breakers.

Best regards,
Thomas

    Hi all,
    
    I have heard that DE-CIX expelled BitCanal from their IXPs. One of their
    guys also gave a presentation about how DE-CIX handles abuse cases:
    https://ripe75.ripe.net/archives/video/103/
    
    I don't know how other IXPs are handling such cases. Would be interesting
    to know.
    
    Best regards,
    IUO

Kudos to DE-CIX for getting it right.

-Hank

Job,

Unless of course they are not actually on an IXP listed. Bitcanal is not a member of TorIX and as far as I recall, never has been. The IP they list in PeeringDB was never assigned to them at any point and in fact was used by an AS112 instance which was run by TorIX directly on the fabric for a time. I sent in a note to PeeringDB several years ago about Bitcanal claiming to be a peer when they were not and never heard back.. I'll resend.

-- Stephen (ops, TorIX)

IXP Manager now has IXF exports that PeeringDB can use to cleanup stale members.

(I've updated the email subject to make it more accurate)

Unless of course they are not actually on an IXP listed.

Of course.

Bitcanal is not a member of TorIX and as far as I recall, never has
been. The IP they list in PeeringDB was never assigned to them at any
point and in fact was used by an AS112 instance which was run by TorIX
directly on the fabric for a time. I sent in a note to PeeringDB
several years ago about Bitcanal claiming to be a peer when they were
not and never heard back.. I'll resend.

Thank you for this clarification. Indeed a note to the PeeringDB Admin
committee should help clean this up. Please note that this organisation
also goes under the name of "Ebony Horizon".

I've manually confirmed bitcanal/AS 197426 is connected to AMS-IX, ECIX
Frankfurt, ESPANIX, FranceIX Paris, GigaPIX, and LINX LON1.

At most of these IXPs, bitcanal seems to be connected the the IXP's
route servers. In my mind, if we want to consider responsibility, these
IXPs are as much at fault as any upstream provider. Connectivity is
connectivity.

Kind regards,

Job

Hi Job, all,

On the France-IX route servers, we are applying filters based on IRR DBs. I double checked the list https://pastebin.com/raw/Jw1my9Bb and these prefixes should be filtered if bitcanal starts announcing them.
Currently, bitcanal/AS197426 is not announcing any prefix on our route servers:

https://lg.franceix.net/irr_found_for/RS1+RS2/ipv4?q=197426
https://lg.franceix.net/irr_notfound_for/RS1+RS2/ipv4?q=197426

regards,
Simon

Dear Simon,

On the France-IX route servers, we are applying filters based on IRR
DBs. I double checked the list https://pastebin.com/raw/Jw1my9Bb and
these prefixes should be filtered if bitcanal starts announcing them.
Currently, bitcanal/AS197426 is not announcing any prefix on our route
servers:

Franceix.net looking glass
Franceix.net looking glass

I'm very happy FranceIX apply filters - however Bitcanal is known to
submit fabricated/falsified IRR information to databases like RADB and
RIPE. I've reported this multiple times over the years to IRR database
operators.

In conclusion in the case of Bitcanal, most of your filtering is useless
(and so is mine). Participants like Bitcanal dillute the value of your
route servers and the IXP as a whole.

Kind regards,

Job

Any solution to that? Yell at the IRRs more?

Or more generally, everyone involved should consider to stop selling
services to well-known BGP hijackers.

Kind regards,

Job

Authoritative list of shame with supporting evidence? (Yes, I assume there isn't one and that one would have to be created.)

Many network operators aren't going to know who's supposed to be on that list and who isn't.

RPKI? BGPsec?

26.06.18 21:27, Mike Hammett пише:

https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/sidr/about/

Being presented at nanog nowish:

Architecting Robust BGP Routing Policies
Lightning Talk: BGP Transport Security - Do You Care?
Lightning Talk: Legal Barriers to Securing the Routing Architecture

I can confirm that this mornig (~09h30 CEST, when I read the first message in the thread) there were no BitCanal announces received from FranceIX Paris RS. Not even the ones with an IRR record (the ones in 213/8). All of them were from transit.

What about now? Still squeaky clean? What about now? What about
tomorrow? You only need to announce hijacked routes for the duration of
the spamming campaign (usually just a few hours). The presence of this
type of actor poses a risk to all connnected to the IX fabric.

Kind regards,

Job