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Verizon Accused of Helping Spammers By Routing Millions of Stolen IP Addresses (spamhaus.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Spamhaus, an international non-profit organization that hunts down spammers, is accusing Verizon of indifference and facilitation of cybercrime because it failed for the past six months to take down stolen IP routes hosted on its network from where spam emails originated. Spamhaus detected over 4 million IP addresses, mainly stolen from China and Korea, and routed on Verizon's servers with forged paperwork. Spamhaus says, "For a start, it seems very strange that a large US-based ISP can be so easily convinced by abusers to route huge IP address blocks assigned to entities in the Asian-Pacific area. Such blocks are not something that can go unnoticed in the noise of everyday activity. They are very anomalous, and should call for an immediate accurate verification of the customer. Internal vetting processes at large ISPs should easily catch situations so far from normality."
Illicit gains > anticipated cost of getting caught? Proceed to fuck everyone.
I always wonder if NSA would simply hack with spoof IPs from China or Russia.
That an ISP is being duped into routing stolen IP's so easily!
Come on, this is Verizon we are talking about here. They don't hire the sharpest knives in the drawer and so they managed to collect a little bit of cash believing the paperwork provided by their customer? Collect the fees, route the IP and should the real owner of the address finally show up and complain, keep the fees, say your are sorry, remove the route and move on to the next prospective customer throwing money at you. Seriously, what's Verizon's incentive to go out of it's way here?
So, these folks want to try and play the "Shame on Verizon" card now? Yea, good luck with making anything change. Verizon doesn't shame that easily or they'd be changing their consumer business practices too..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
IMHO Verizon is right up there with Comcast in being one of the most despicable companies in the US. They bought spectrum from the FCC promising to keep it "open" but don't approve non-Verizon devices until tons of "testing" that can take a year. They are the ones who started fighting any net neutrality. And then they (according to this post) enable spammers. Because as a huge ISP, paying attention to real technical details might be too....time consuming and profit-leaching...
Use these IPs for secure DNS from Verisign: 64.6.64.6 and 64.6.65.6
See verisign.com/publicdns
No tracking. No spying. Free and secure.
A few years ago, Verizon employed some to the best people in the best people in the world to handle network and routing security. They were very responsive to reports of address hijacking and related issues. Those folks have all left Verizon since they bought UUnet, though the rush for the door didn't start until about 4 years ago.
This all happened about the time I left the operational world and started moving into retirement, so I don't know the people who replaced them, but I am sure that, if they were replaced at all, that the new people were not of the caliber of those who left.
As is often the case, network security seems to have been declared a low priority at Verizon. after all, it does not make them any money. Of course, if they become known for bad security, it could have an impact on the bottom line at some point.
Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
Recently discovered that Verizon is mainly using IPv6 so... Yes it would be easy with that many addresses to allocate.
Hold the principles of corporations criminally liable for things that happen on their networks. Imprison a few of these motherfuckers and watch corporate behavior get better overnight.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
> Such blocks are not something that can go unnoticed in the noise of everyday activity.
Although it can probably never be proven, occam's razor indicates that money changed hands. It's a more logical conclusion than this level of incompetence amongst the necessary number of employees.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Does spamhaus still exists? Does spam still exist? (Its been years since I've seen any spam in _my_ inbox.)
The law is not an ass. No really.
So all this spam invoices I get in my mail, that appear to come from Chinese IP addresses, and the attachments contain a virus payload are actually from Verizon???
It's not just spam is it? This is malware being sent.
Usually a PDF or DOC using a known exploit.
Probably part of some espionage program...
Fuck Spamhaus, StopSpamForum.com, SBL, PBL, and XBL.
These "services" are a waste of time. The world lives on dynamic IPs. It sucks that spammers and hackers abuse dynamic IPs, but that's the way it is and lots of web sites use Cloudflare and Cloudflare blocks IPs that appear in these lists. So now not only do we still get spam, but legitimate web users get blocked long after the spammers have gone. Thing with being a vigilante: Either do it right, or don't do it at all.
intentional government fuckery.
Don't assume malice. When it comes to routing customer-provided IP blocks (eBGP), there are two types of companies:
The first will demand, inspect and understand your documentation. Their routers will accept announcements from your end only for the ranges have been registered to the ASN that you've proved belongs to your organization.
The other doesn't really know what BGP does, but when you asked for it, they read the manual for their router and figured out how to activate it on your port.
You'll find roughly the same distribution of competence with outgoing ANI if you still have a PRI on your PBX, except that you know in advance what you are getting. The ILEC will let you put any ANI you want on your outgoing calls, as long as it's yours. The CLECs don't know/care if you forge your ANI to make your calls look like they are coming from the White House.
See that "Preview" button?
I quote for you an important consideration from the summary: "Spamhaus detected over 4 million IP addresses, mainly stolen from China and Korea, and routed on Verizon's servers with forged paperwork."
So next time you accuse China or Russia of hacking or being full of criminals because you saw it was a Chinese IP, remember Verizon is quite willing to pretend that an IP comes from there when from a location nowhere near that region.
They can't because *government* stops them. But if government were not to exist or be powerless to stop them, they can and would do it.
They're too busy denying bandwidth of those who've paid for it to be bothered by those who have not.
They care about money nothing else.
Even their new on hold tv commercials prove it.
Customer service is so backed up it is crazy.
You know how you fix it. You replace every crappy box you have with ones that work.
If you are helping me or I am helping myself a tv box that takes a 1/2 hour to boot.
And Internet box that stops talking to anything because you just turn one one new PC to the network. Only way to fix it is to reboot.
And wait like 10 min for that.
I have never watched tv or surfed the net while my coffee or food was still hot.
Never had these problems with other providers and I am sure this is the cause of all their trouble.
I fix the issues myself but others will call every time.