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Scam-Linked ISP Intercage / Atrivo Gets Shut Out
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."
For a couple of hours?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Hopefully it will cut down on the amount of spam...
...should have attached that new cover sheet to their TPS report.
I was thinking to myself "God! My EMail account must be in problem, I didn't receive any spam since the weekend", then I got this really great offer, a guy who is going to give me 20% of 5 million US dollars to help him recover a lost bank account. Well that's perfect, I'm the one who's finally gonna be rich!
I was thinking to myself "God! My EMail account must be in problem
I think I've seen some of your recent work in my inbox. "Is your manhood in problem? Click here!"
I'm a big tall mofo.
I thought they were pretty much a passive organization that just lists domains and companies that are either irresponsible or actively take part in spam- or malware-related activity. It feels a little disingenuous to claim that they pressured a provider to drop a client.
they used to host quite alot of warez, and their whole range is blocked on wikipedia...
or ask any question
Okay ... so not spam and not illegal. What then? Porn? Why would we hate you for that?
I'm sure if they ask real nice on the news.admin.net-abuse.email and news.admin.net-abuse.sightings newsfroups, they'll be reconnected in no time :D
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
He kinda answered that already...
We all know that blowjobs are not illegal in the US when performed by consenting (human) adults. Depending what kind of person you are his admission could raise further questions, I don't even want to think about it.
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.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I dislike spam as much as the next guy, but when we start letting ISP's decide what we can do with our domains it's the beginning of the end.
A much better solution would be to devise and implement a secure authenticated email system. SMTP is so 60's...
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
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.
blowjobs are not illegal in the US when performed by consenting (human) adults
IANAL but I bet that's false in at least a few states esp. if its same sex partners
Get back to /b/ you moron
No, it's not 'slippery' anything.
A company engages in behavior that everyone else finds unacceptable (theft of service and abuse of resources.)
This company's suppliers receive complaints, and terminate the company's connection for breach of contract.
Company goes to different suppliers.
New suppliers cut them off.
Eventually there are no more suppliers.
This is the *definition* of how the free market is supposed to work.
Atrivo had *many* chances to fix their behaviour. They instead just moved to a different ISP.
They're now out of ISPs, which means they're out of business, which is good for everybody.
If they don't want to be disconnected, they shouldn't have abused their services.
A much better solution would be to devise and implement a secure authenticated email system.
Spam is a social problem, not a techincal one. Any attempt to solve it with a technical solution is doomed to fail.
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.
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
In the state of Mississippi all forms of sodomy are illegal. But its legal to marry a 13 year old girl if she isn't a virgin. WTF!
It's one thing to expand a block of the ISP is letting the offender move around within an expanded block, e.g. 1.2/16 has a customer 1.2.3/24 who asks to move to 1.2.4/24 after being blacklisted.
However, if the real offenders are nicely sequestered in 1.2.3/24 then expanding the blacklist does not cause any more harm to the offenders and just makes people mad at you. It would be like Mexico canceling its extradition treaty with the United States because Texas executed someone after denying them their consular rights. It may be effective but it's not the right tool.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
And yes, I make more money than any of you will probably ever do.
Spam, porn, mercenary/terrorism-for-profit, warez-for-profit, drugs, organized crime, developing/hosting tools or services used by any of the above
However I dont do anything thats illegal here
That leaves porn. Or something illegal in the USA but not where you are.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Back in 2002 or so the United States Supreme Court told the cops to get out of people's bedrooms.
Ever since then, just about anything goes as long as it's between consenting adults, doesn't cause permanent harm, and doesn't involve other illegal activities like using illegal drugs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If the comment under the story is to be believed they already found a new provider. Time to expand the range of IP addresses blocked by default?
So is manned spaceflight.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Utilities are supposed to act like common carriers even if they have no legal obligation to do so.
Once they stop acting like common carriers, the slippery slope has begun.
Common carriers can only terminate you for violation of contract, not because they are being threatened with a boycott.
If you are going to blacklist an ISP, blacklist it for either not enforcing its TOS or not having an effective one, not because they currently happen to have a problem customer.
If you are an ISP, don't make long-term contracts, and keep your TOS up-to-date so you are within your rights to boot customers who engage in behavior that is generally regarded as both harmful and not protected by law or common-law understanding of what constitutes human rights.
Granted, the latter will vary by country: Neo-Nazis and Scientologists are protected by human-rights laws in the United States, while the common behavior of both groups is specifically illegal in some European countries and no ISP in those countries should be expected to host them.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
A bit over a week ago Brian Krebs, who writes the "Security Fix" blog in the Washington Post, went public with a number of allegations about Atrivo and its activities. As a result, many of Atrivo's own upstream connectivity providers disconnected them.
What kind of clinically retarded individual buys a stock with a share price of three one-hundredths of a cent?
Let the police determine what is and what is not illegal.
In the case of civil torts, like some copyright, spam, and the like:
If it's within your country, use the court system. That's what it is there for. If the RIAA knew with a high degree of certainty that I was hosting songs, they could get an injunction against me then get me tossed in jail for contempt if I violated it.
If it's in another country, then you might have to take the law into your own hands. If I'm Comcast and some ISP in another country is sending my customers a bunch of spam, or some web-hosting company in another country is hosting fake bank web sites and it's impacting my customers, then with my customers prior approval to act on their behalf it's okay for me to blacklist the spammers or if necessary, their ISP. Blacklisting the ISP is probably a bad idea if it will hurt innocent third parties, and it may lead to a tit-for-tat blacklisting war.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Check out the NANOG thread on this here: http://www.merit.edu/mail.archives/nanog/msg11573.html.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Law enforcement won't get involved unless someone hacks Sarah Palin's email again.
I reject email that doesn't have an authenticated HELO or MAIL FROM via SPF or heuristic default policy. While this cuts down on zombie spam, there is still a steady stream of spam from fully authenticated throwaway domains. These are automatically blacklisted after 20 spam, or sooner if I do it manually. But new authenticated spam domains are registered daily (I see at least 6 new ones every day).
So while it is nice that spammers can't abuse someone elses domain to send me spam when email is authenticated, no authentication system is going to stop spam. If I required all email to be encrypted, spammers would encrypt their spam.
...this explains why my spam numbers are down by half this week.
Last week, average was about 350 daily rejects. This week, 150.
Nice.
Intercage are not spammers. They are an ISP that hosts Esthost. Esthost has been known for their malware (not spam) and have been cleaning up. Pacific Internet Exchange decided to give them a second chance but Spamhaus decided to block a /22 of PIE's even though only bandwidth was given to Intercage. This is extremely unfair of Spamhaus to punish 100's of PIE's innocent customers that spam isn't even coming from. Spamhaus seems to have a personal vendetta against Intercage even though they have nothing to do with spam. PIE disconnected Intercage because of business to business issues, not because of Spamhaus' unfair blacklisting. BTW, Intercage is already back online with United Layer, we'll see how long that lasts...
a recent millionaire, thx!