Cogent & FDCServers: Knowingly aiding and abetting fraud and theft?
Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr... For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za article. The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.) Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region. In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB. Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th: https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date: https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater. The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger. Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.) Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here: https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out. Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net). https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96 A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response. More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance. But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you? Regards, rfg
A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not “belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne”. It belongs to an individual, with an office address at a building called “Port Authority of Melbourne”: person: Rob Shute address: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St country: AU phone: +61 3 9628 7613 e-mail: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> nic-hdl: RS54-AP remarks: ---------- remarks: imported from ARIN object: remarks: remarks: poc-handle: RS546-ARIN remarks: is-role: N remarks: last-name: Shute remarks: first-name: Rob remarks: street: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St remarks: country: AU remarks: mailbox: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> remarks: bus-phone: +61 3 9628 7613 remarks: reg-date: 1970-01-01 remarks: changed: hostmaster@arin.poc<mailto:hostmaster@arin.poc> 20001127 remarks: source: ARIN remarks: remarks: ---------- notify: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> mnt-by: MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU<https://wq.apnic.net/static/search.html?query=MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU> last-modified: 2008-09-04T07:31:33Z source: APNIC The building called the Port Authority of Melbourne is not, by all accounts, a government agency. It’s just the name of a 54-story office building, like the World Trade Center in NYC. In fact, World Trade Centre (Melbourne) is another name for the building, and although it houses the Port of Melbourne Authority agency (on Level 4, not Level 47), it appears to be largely just a toney address for business offices. Some, perhaps, not unlike American “Mail Boxes Etc” (although I haven’t confirmed this). But the following Wikipedia excerpt says this unambiguously: The building currently houses some offices of the headquarters of Victoria Police, and the Victoria Police Museum , a collection of exhibits and memorabilia from over 150 years of policing in Victoria.[3] It also houses offices for companies, including Thales Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Melbourne_Authority Now, I’m not an Ossie, and in fact have never been down under, but it seems likely that the address in the registration is akin to a US business having a World Trade Center address in NYC. It means nothing as far as APNIC asset ownership is concerned. It’s just an address. I could be wrong. However, it seems a simple fact to verify by calling management at that building. I tried sending email to the registered “.gov.au<http://gov.au>” address: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> But the domain does not exist. -mel beckman On Sep 6, 2019, at 1:30 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com<mailto:rfg@tristatelogic.com>> wrote: Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za>. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr... For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> article. The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.) Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region. In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB. Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th: https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date: https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater. The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger. Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com<http://OpenCorporates.com> seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.) Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here: https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out. Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net<http://fdcservers.net>). https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96 A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response. More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance. But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you? Regards, rfg
Sorry, re-sending to include the list. Looking at the history of the prefix, it does look like it did belong to the now-defunct Port of Melbourne Authority, with the matching e-mail address. That particular organization, however, no longer exists, having been absorbed into the Port of Melbourne Corporation, which is a proper statutory organization in Australia. A quick MX lookup does show that pma.vic.gov.au<http://pma.vic.gov.au/> does not have any functioning mail servers on it however, and likely hasn’t been for some time (given it was absorbed in 2003). On Sep 6, 2019, at 21:26, Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote: A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not “belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne”. It belongs to an individual, with an office address at a building called “Port Authority of Melbourne”: person: Rob Shute address: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St country: AU phone: +61 3 9628 7613 e-mail: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> nic-hdl: RS54-AP remarks: ---------- remarks: imported from ARIN object: remarks: remarks: poc-handle: RS546-ARIN remarks: is-role: N remarks: last-name: Shute remarks: first-name: Rob remarks: street: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St remarks: country: AU remarks: mailbox: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> remarks: bus-phone: +61 3 9628 7613 remarks: reg-date: 1970-01-01 remarks: changed: hostmaster@arin.poc<mailto:hostmaster@arin.poc> 20001127 remarks: source: ARIN remarks: remarks: ---------- notify: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> mnt-by: MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU<https://wq.apnic.net/static/search.html?query=MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU> last-modified: 2008-09-04T07:31:33Z source: APNIC The building called the Port Authority of Melbourne is not, by all accounts, a government agency. It’s just the name of a 54-story office building, like the World Trade Center in NYC. In fact, World Trade Centre (Melbourne) is another name for the building, and although it houses the Port of Melbourne Authority agency (on Level 4, not Level 47), it appears to be largely just a toney address for business offices. Some, perhaps, not unlike American “Mail Boxes Etc” (although I haven’t confirmed this). But the following Wikipedia excerpt says this unambiguously: The building currently houses some offices of the headquarters of Victoria Police, and the Victoria Police Museum , a collection of exhibits and memorabilia from over 150 years of policing in Victoria.[3] It also houses offices for companies, including Thales Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Melbourne_Authority Now, I’m not an Ossie, and in fact have never been down under, but it seems likely that the address in the registration is akin to a US business having a World Trade Center address in NYC. It means nothing as far as APNIC asset ownership is concerned. It’s just an address. I could be wrong. However, it seems a simple fact to verify by calling management at that building. I tried sending email to the registered “.gov.au<http://gov.au>” address: djk@pma.vic.gov.au<mailto:djk@pma.vic.gov.au> But the domain does not exist. -mel beckman On Sep 6, 2019, at 1:30 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com<mailto:rfg@tristatelogic.com>> wrote: Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za>. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr... For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> article. The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.) Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region. In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB. Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th: https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date: https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater. The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger. Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com<http://OpenCorporates.com> seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.) Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here: https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za<http://MyBroadband.co.za> article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out. Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net<http://fdcservers.net>). https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96 A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response. More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance. But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you? Regards, rfg
On Fri, Sep 6, 2019 at 8:13 AM Neo Soon Keat <neo@soonkeat.sg> wrote:
Sorry, re-sending to include the list.
Looking at the history of the prefix, it does look like it did belong to the now-defunct Port of Melbourne Authority, with the matching e-mail address. That particular organization, however, no longer exists, having been absorbed into the Port of Melbourne Corporation, which is a proper statutory organization in Australia.
A quick MX lookup does show that pma.vic.gov.au does not have any functioning mail servers on it however, and likely hasn’t been for some time (given it was absorbed in 2003).
it's hard for a domein that doesn't exist to have any records, really... just sayin.
On Sep 6, 2019, at 21:26, Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not “belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne”. It belongs to an individual, with an *office address *at a building *called “*Port Authority of Melbourne”:
person: Rob Shute
address: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St
country: AU phone: +61 3 9628 7613 e-mail: djk@pma.vic.gov.au nic-hdl: RS54-AP remarks: ---------- remarks: imported from ARIN object: remarks: remarks: poc-handle: RS546-ARIN remarks: is-role: N remarks: last-name: Shute remarks: first-name: Rob remarks: street: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St remarks: country: AU remarks: mailbox: djk@pma.vic.gov.au remarks: bus-phone: +61 3 9628 7613 remarks: reg-date: 1970-01-01 remarks: changed: hostmaster@arin.poc 20001127 remarks: source: ARIN remarks: remarks: ---------- notify: djk@pma.vic.gov.au mnt-by: MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU <https://wq.apnic.net/static/search.html?query=MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU> last-modified: 2008-09-04T07:31:33Z source: APNIC
The *building *called the Port Authority of Melbourne is not, by all accounts, a government agency. It’s just the name of a 54-story office building, like the World Trade Center in NYC. In fact, *World Trade Centre (Melbourne) *is another name for the building, and although it houses the Port of Melbourne Authority agency (on Level 4, not Level 47), it appears to be largely just a toney address for business offices. Some, perhaps, not unlike American “Mail Boxes Etc” (although I haven’t confirmed this). But the following Wikipedia excerpt says this unambiguously:
*The building currently houses some offices of the headquarters of Victoria Police, and the Victoria Police Museum , a collection of exhibits and memorabilia from over 150 years of policing in Victoria.[3] It also houses offices for companies, including Thales Australia.*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Melbourne_Authority
Now, I’m not an Ossie, and in fact have never been down under, but it seems likely that the *address* in the registration is akin to a US business having a World Trade Center address in NYC. It means nothing as far as APNIC asset ownership is concerned. It’s just an address.
I could be wrong. However, it seems a simple fact to verify by calling management at that building. I tried sending email to the registered “. gov.au” address:
djk@pma.vic.gov.au
But the domain does not exist.
-mel beckman
On Sep 6, 2019, at 1:30 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr...
For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za article.
The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.)
Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region.
In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB.
Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th:
https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt
And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date:
https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R
Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater.
The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger.
Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view
When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view
Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.)
Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here:
https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF
When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out.
Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net).
https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96
A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response.
More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance.
But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you?
Regards, rfg
Hi, (Also never been in Australia, unfortunately...) Netname is "PMANET": ...isn't it OK to assume it could stand for "Port of Melbourne Authority Network"? * pma.vic.gov.au is not operational (i wonder what can be found with passive dns) * vic.gov.au is still operational. Quick googling also allowed me to find this: https://www.portofmelbourne.com/about-us/port-history/timeline/ "1996 Melbourne Port Corporation established as successor to Port of Melbourne Authority." Regards, Carlos On Fri, 6 Sep 2019, Mel Beckman wrote:
A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not ?belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne?. It belongs to an individual, with an office address at a building called ?Port Authority of Melbourne?: person: Rob Shute
address: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St
country: AU phone: +61 3 9628 7613 e-mail: djk@pma.vic.gov.au nic-hdl: RS54-AP remarks: ---------- remarks: imported from ARIN object: remarks: remarks: poc-handle: RS546-ARIN remarks: is-role: N remarks: last-name: Shute remarks: first-name: Rob remarks: street: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St remarks: country: AU remarks: mailbox: djk@pma.vic.gov.au remarks: bus-phone: +61 3 9628 7613 remarks: reg-date: 1970-01-01 remarks: changed: hostmaster@arin.poc 20001127 remarks: source: ARIN remarks: remarks: ---------- notify: djk@pma.vic.gov.au mnt-by: MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU last-modified: 2008-09-04T07:31:33Z source: APNIC The building called the Port Authority of Melbourne is not, by all accounts, a government agency. It?s just the name of a 54-story office building, like the World Trade Center in NYC. In fact, World Trade Centre (Melbourne) is another name for the building, and although it houses the Port of Melbourne Authority agency (on Level 4, not Level 47), it appears to be largely just a toney address for business offices. Some, perhaps, not unlike American ?Mail Boxes Etc? (although I haven?t confirmed this). But the following Wikipedia excerpt says this unambiguously:
The building currently houses some offices of the headquarters of Victoria Police, and the Victoria Police Museum , a collection of exhibits and memorabilia from over 150 years of policing in Victoria.[3] It also houses offices for companies, including Thales Australia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Melbourne_Authority
Now, I?m not an Ossie, and in fact have never been down under, but it seems likely that the address in the registration is akin to a US business having a World Trade Center address in NYC. It means nothing as far as APNIC asset ownership is concerned. It?s just an address.
I could be wrong. However, it seems a simple fact to verify by calling management at that building. I tried sending email to the registered ?.gov.au? address:
djk@pma.vic.gov.au
But the domain does not exist.
-mel beckman
On Sep 6, 2019, at 1:30 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr...
For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za article.
The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.)
Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region.
In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB.
Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th:
https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt
And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date:
https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R
Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater.
The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger.
Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view
When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view
Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.)
Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here:
https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF
When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out.
Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net).
https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96
A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response.
More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance.
But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you?
Regards, rfg
Important realization: Things don’t always work there like they work here (wherever “here” is for you). -Ben
On Sep 6, 2019, at 6:57 AM, Carlos Friaças via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:
Hi,
(Also never been in Australia, unfortunately...)
Netname is "PMANET": ...isn't it OK to assume it could stand for "Port of Melbourne Authority Network"?
* pma.vic.gov.au is not operational (i wonder what can be found with passive dns)
* vic.gov.au is still operational.
Quick googling also allowed me to find this:
https://www.portofmelbourne.com/about-us/port-history/timeline/
"1996 Melbourne Port Corporation established as successor to Port of Melbourne Authority."
Regards, Carlos
On Fri, 6 Sep 2019, Mel Beckman wrote:
A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not ?belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne?. It belongs to an individual, with an office address at a building called ?Port Authority of Melbourne?: person: Rob Shute address: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St country: AU phone: +61 3 9628 7613 e-mail: djk@pma.vic.gov.au nic-hdl: RS54-AP remarks: ---------- remarks: imported from ARIN object: remarks: remarks: poc-handle: RS546-ARIN remarks: is-role: N remarks: last-name: Shute remarks: first-name: Rob remarks: street: Port of Melbourne Authority Level 47 South 525 Collins St remarks: country: AU remarks: mailbox: djk@pma.vic.gov.au remarks: bus-phone: +61 3 9628 7613 remarks: reg-date: 1970-01-01 remarks: changed: hostmaster@arin.poc 20001127 remarks: source: ARIN remarks: remarks: ---------- notify: djk@pma.vic.gov.au mnt-by: MNT-ERX-PRTMELAUTH-NON-AU last-modified: 2008-09-04T07:31:33Z source: APNIC The building called the Port Authority of Melbourne is not, by all accounts, a government agency. It?s just the name of a 54-story office building, like the World Trade Center in NYC. In fact, World Trade Centre (Melbourne) is another name for the building, and although it houses the Port of Melbourne Authority agency (on Level 4, not Level 47), it appears to be largely just a toney address for business offices. Some, perhaps, not unlike American ?Mail Boxes Etc? (although I haven?t confirmed this). But the following Wikipedia excerpt says this unambiguously: The building currently houses some offices of the headquarters of Victoria Police, and the Victoria Police Museum , a collection of exhibits and memorabilia from over 150 years of policing in Victoria.[3] It also houses offices for companies, including Thales Australia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Melbourne_Authority Now, I?m not an Ossie, and in fact have never been down under, but it seems likely that the address in the registration is akin to a US business having a World Trade Center address in NYC. It means nothing as far as APNIC asset ownership is concerned. It?s just an address. I could be wrong. However, it seems a simple fact to verify by calling management at that building. I tried sending email to the registered ?.gov.au? address: djk@pma.vic.gov.au But the domain does not exist. -mel beckman On Sep 6, 2019, at 1:30 AM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
Few of you here probably know about this, but nearly a week ago now an article appeared in South Africa's largest and most popular online tech publication, MyBroadband.co.za. It detailed many, but certainly not all of the results of my multi-month investigation of a massive and ongoing fraud involving the theft of large numbers of large (generally /16 or larger) abandoned legacy blocks, taken from the AFRINIC region and beyond: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/318205-the-big-south-african-ip-addr...
For various editorial reasons, the article that was published actually downplayed the magnitude of the of the thefts quite dramatically. The totality of the IPv4 space that has been stolen or squatted, primarily but not exclusively, from South African companies and South African national goverment agencies and departments is actually at least 5x bigger than what was reported in the MyBroadband.co.za article.
The overwhelming majority of this stolen and squatted IPv4 space has been helpfully routed by Cogent (AS174), to their customer, FDCServers of Chicago, and then on to the prefered destinations of a certain Mr. Elad Cohen of Israel, and his company Netstyle Atarim, Ltd. (I have saved traceroutes up the wazoo that prove the involvement of FDCServers, in particular, in all of this.)
Mr. Cohen has been exceptionally prolific in his IPv4 theft and squatting activities, basically grabbing everything that wasn't nailed down, both within the AFRINIC region and also within the APNIC region.
In order to try to legitimize all of these thefts and squats, Mr. Cohen created quite a sizable number of fradulent route: objects within the Merit/RADB data base which, as most here should already know, has essentially zero authentication of any kind before it allows J. Random Luser to add pretty much any any route: object he wants to the RADB.
Here's a full listing of all of Mr. Cohen's RADB route: objects as they existed as recently as August 17th:
https://pastebin.com/raw/ZNgNuvtt
And here is the short summary version showing just all of the prefixes/CIDRs that Mr. Cohen was effectively claiming rights and/or title to as of that same date:
https://pastebin.com/raw/4LTaCg5R
Plese do note the numerous blocks of size /16 or greater.
The bottom line is that this one tiny little Israeli company was effectively claiming rights to a total of no fewer than 1,015,808 IPv4 addresses as of August 17th, 2019. (Not too shabby for one lone guy who teaches programming classes as a side job!) Vitrually all of the space is "legacy" IPv4 space, and generally consists of blocks having sizes of /16 or larger.
Some of Mr. Cohen claims in his RADB entries are as humorous as they are pathetically fradulent. For example, Mr. Cohen has effectively claimed rights to 139.44.0.0/16 which unambiguously belongs to the Port Authority of the City of Melbourne, Australia. But hell! That's merely city property! Mr. Cohen's limitless appetite for other people's IPv4 space is more vividly on display in his claims to ownerhip over the 168.198.0.0/16 block, which actually belongs to the Department of Finance of the Australian national government. And I haven't even mentioned yet another of Mr. Cohen volumous IPv4 acqusitions, the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which he did not see fit to create an RADB entry for, but which he's been squatting on for for quite some time now, quite clearly with the aid and assistance of both Cogent and FDCServers. That one belongs to th City of Cape Town, South Africa. That city's engineers have been struggling to regain control of their block back from Cogent, from FDCServers, and from Mr. Cohen for some time now. I know because I've personally spoken to them about it. Cogent, in its infinite wisdom, is continuing to fight the city for control over property that clearly and righfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, even as we speak:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytRj1CtuVhDa0eGu4BT-oEz593y5EwJa/view
When asked for LOAs attesting to his legitimate authority to route at least a few of these blocks, Mr. Cohen has produced blatantly forged documents, many of which appeared in the MyBroadband.co.za story. And when I say "blatant" that's a gross understatement. Any half-way decent forger would consider these documents an embarrasment. The documents all bear identical signatures, and identical and vaguely official looking stamps, and purport to actually be sales reciepts attesting to the alleged purchases, by Mr. Cohen's offshore Seychelles Islands shell company, Afri Holdings, Ltd., of various /16 blocks from a mysterious company called Afrivestment, Ltd., which may actually exist in some faraway galaxy, or in Mr. Cohen's active imagination, but which both Google and OpenCorporates.com seem to agree exists exactly noplace on this planet. Here are the manufactured LOAs supplied by Mr. Cohen:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVjmR6u0ANltuXtZ-Kng8io-EGFyevTR/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x_44_H5hkcFLhEwpkwfFoR5PJUyXHzxJ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yQyqn4q_f3bt-wDVoN1FzbXf1k58DXtK/view
Recently, Cohen started to move some, but not all, of his stolen and squatted IPv4 blocks off of Cogent/FDCServers and onto a friendly little bullet-proof hosting company in the Netherlands named IP Volume, Inc. (AS202425) and/or to its several sister networks, e.g. AS204655 - Novogara Ltd., all of which, coincidently, just happen to be owned by the exact same pair of Dutch gentlemen who previously owned the notorious Ecatel, follwed by the notorious Quasi Networks. (IP Volume, Inc. appears to have intherited all or nearly all of its legitimately assigned IP space from its predecessor entities, Ecatel and Quasi Networks.)
Despite these relocations, many of Mr. Cohen's stolen and squatted blocks are still helpfully being routed to Mr. Cohen's preferred desitnations by his good friends at Cogent and FDCServers, even as we speak. The current set of such routes that Cogent is maintaining, at the moment, apparently on behalf of their customer, Mr. Cohen, consists of the prefixes listed here:
https://pastebin.com/raw/EA3xJVLF
When I noticed two days ago that all of these routes were still up I was deeply confused. Did both Cogent and FDCServrs not get the memo?? Do they not know yet that Cohen is stealing stuff, left, right, and sideways? Did nobody even tell them about the MyBroadband.co.za article which was published this past Sunday? I decided that it was incumbant upon me to find out.
Thus, more that 48 hours ago now I sent the following polite but firm inquiry to Cogent, and a separate nearly identical one directly to the CEO of FDCServers, Mr. Petr Kral (petr(at)fdcservers.net).
https://pastebin.com/raw/ztipqE96
A full forty eight hours later, I have received no reply whatsoever from either Cogent or FDCServers, not even a "Go pound sand" type of response.
More importantly, most of the stolen IPv4 space that I called out, very specifically, to both Cogent and FDCservers two+ days ago now is still being routed by Cogent/FDCservers to their fun-loving and, I'm sure, promptly paying customer, Mr. Cohen. If neither Cogent nor FDCServers still do not know now that Mr. Cohen is a crook, and that he has glommed onto quite a lot of stolen and squatted IPv4 space... which they have been helpfully routing for him, no doubt in exchange for some handsome payments... then I am foreced to say that it appears to be a reasonable conclusion that it must be because neither Cogent nor FDCServers really wants to know what sort of a character Cohen is, or what he has been up to, specifically with their ongoing and material assistance.
But you all be the judges. What does it look like to you?
Regards, rfg
In message <5233B9B9-1BFF-425D-BB8F-E3853703B3F3@beckman.org>, Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
A quick check of one of your facts produces unexpected results, so you might want to perform more research. According the APNIC, 139.44.0.0/16 does not “belong unambiguously to the Port Authority of Melbourne”.
Please, let's not start staring at -one- tree out of the sveeral that I've talked about, and then start arguing about the shape of the pine cones on that one tree. Doing that will give short shrift to the rather larger forrest that I've tried to expose here. Is anyone disputing that 168.198.0.0/16 belongs to the Australian national government, or that AS174, Cogent was, until quite recently, routing that down to their pals at FDCServers who then were routing it down to their customer, Elad Cohen? If so, I ask that people look up this network in the RIPE Routing history tool and ALSO that folks have a look at, and explain, the following traceroute from August 23: https://pastebin.com/raw/2nJtbwjs Is anyone disputing that the 165.25.0.0/16 block rightfully belongs to the City of Cape Town, or that Cogent -continues- even as we speak, to announce a competing route to it? If so, I ask any such parties to please explain this traceroute from August 20th: https://pastebin.com/raw/2nJtbwjs Is anyones disputing that the LOAs that Mr. Cohen has produced in response to queries about some of the blocks he has stolen, and then routed via Cogent and FDCServers, are blatant and indeed really bad forgeries? Is anyone disputing that Mr. Cohen has, in effect, and via the Merit/RADB data base, claimed rights over more than a million IPv4 addresses, many of which self-evidently do not belong to him, or that Mr. Cohen's gracious and helpful providers, FDCSewers and Cogent appear to have effectively turned a blind eye to all this, or that they continue to do so, even as we speak? The Subject line that I used to start this thread may have seemed to some to be over-the-top and provocative, but to be frank, I think now that I may have not gone far enough. Cogent has been announcing a route to the 165.25.0.0/16 block, which unambiguously belongs to the City of Cape Town, At what point does such interference with legitimate governmental functions an authority, on Cogent's part, cross over from being merely bad manners and into the realm of criminality? Regards, rfg
In message <23540.1567802066@segfault.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:
Is anyone disputing that 168.198.0.0/16 belongs to the Australian national government, or that AS174, Cogent was, until quite recently, routing that down to their pals at FDCServers who then were routing it down to their customer, Elad Cohen? If so, I ask that people look up this network in the RIPE Routing history tool and ALSO that folks have a look at, and explain, the following traceroute from August 23:
My apologies. In my furious haste, I botched that one URL. Here is the correct file conatining my traceroute to 168.198.12.242 as performed by me on August 23rd: https://pastebin.com/raw/TrLbGZuW Regards, rfg
Hello Ronald, if you'd open the traceroute you just sent you'd see that the target is route looping and not actually used by their alleged customer? Since the loop is actually between the FDC aggregation router and Cogent's backbone router. Also, what would the target IP have been in this case, since it was omitted? On Sep. 6 2019, at 11:06 pm, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
In message <23540.1567802066@segfault.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:
Is anyone disputing that 168.198.0.0/16 belongs to the Australian national government, or that AS174, Cogent was, until quite recently, routing that down to their pals at FDCServers who then were routing it down to their customer, Elad Cohen? If so, I ask that people look up this network in the RIPE Routing history tool and ALSO that folks have a look at, and explain, the following traceroute from August 23:
https://pastebin.com/raw/2nJtbwjs My apologies. In my furious haste, I botched that one URL. Here is the correct file conatining my traceroute to 168.198.12.242 as performed by me on August 23rd:
https://pastebin.com/raw/TrLbGZuW
Regards, rfg
In message <67B3E0D5-7D09-42E2-A753-EB6C93859F12@getmailspring.com>, Florian Brandstetter <florianb@globalone.io> wrote:
if you'd open the traceroute you just sent you'd see that the target is route looping and not actually used by their alleged customer?
Yea. So? How is that relevant to my fundamental narrative? Cogent was announcing the whole of 168.198.0.0/16. Do we agree? Theye were most probably *not* doing so just for laughs or just to create routing loops. Do we agree? Traceroutes show that from Cogent, packets were further being passed to FDCServers. Do we agree? Now, if you want to know who FDCSewer's customer was in this case, why don't you try asking them? I am satisfied that the intel that I've already collected indicates the exceptionally high probability that this entire legacy /16 block... along with many many others, also of entirely dubious provenance... were all being routed to and for a certain Mr. Elad Cohen and his company, Netstyle Atarim, Ltd.: organisation: ORG-NAL9-RIPE org-name: NETSTYLE A. LTD org-type: LIR address: Derech Menachem Begin 156 address: 6492108 address: Tel-Aviv address: ISRAEL phone: +972-1-800-204-404 e-mail: info (at) netstyle.io
Also, what would the target IP have been in this case, since it was omitted?
If you look carefully, I gave that in the post you are responding to:
My apologies. In my furious haste, I botched that one URL. Here is the correct file conatining my traceroute to 168.198.12.242 as performed by me on August 23rd:
Regards, rfg
Ron, I’m just saying that I randomly checked one fact and it doesn’t meet the level of positive certainty that you asserted. It’s thus reasonable to ask you to double check your research all around. I’m not willing to be your unpaid copy editor, so let me know when you’ve done a double check and I’ll be willing to invest time in your story again. -mel via cell
On Sep 6, 2019, at 2:07 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
In message <23540.1567802066@segfault.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:
Is anyone disputing that 168.198.0.0/16 belongs to the Australian national government, or that AS174, Cogent was, until quite recently, routing that down to their pals at FDCServers who then were routing it down to their customer, Elad Cohen? If so, I ask that people look up this network in the RIPE Routing history tool and ALSO that folks have a look at, and explain, the following traceroute from August 23:
My apologies. In my furious haste, I botched that one URL. Here is the correct file conatining my traceroute to 168.198.12.242 as performed by me on August 23rd:
https://pastebin.com/raw/TrLbGZuW
Regards, rfg
The fact that the port authority building is also an office building with multiple other tenants? Whois contacts on a defunct domain belonging to an Australian government port authority agency that’s since been renamed don’t appear to support your hypothesis that this is another tenant of a government owned building. --srs ________________________________ From: NANOG <nanog-bounces@nanog.org> on behalf of Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> Sent: Saturday, September 7, 2019 5:30 AM To: Ronald F. Guilmette Cc: nanog@nanog.org Subject: Re: Cogent & FDCServers: Knowingly aiding and abetting fraud and theft? Ron, I’m just saying that I randomly checked one fact and it doesn’t meet the level of positive certainty that you asserted. It’s thus reasonable to ask you to double check your research all around. I’m not willing to be your unpaid copy editor, so let me know when you’ve done a double check and I’ll be willing to invest time in your story again. -mel via cell
On Sep 6, 2019, at 2:07 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg@tristatelogic.com> wrote:
In message <23540.1567802066@segfault.tristatelogic.com>, I wrote:
Is anyone disputing that 168.198.0.0/16 belongs to the Australian national government, or that AS174, Cogent was, until quite recently, routing that down to their pals at FDCServers who then were routing it down to their customer, Elad Cohen? If so, I ask that people look up this network in the RIPE Routing history tool and ALSO that folks have a look at, and explain, the following traceroute from August 23:
My apologies. In my furious haste, I botched that one URL. Here is the correct file conatining my traceroute to 168.198.12.242 as performed by me on August 23rd:
https://pastebin.com/raw/TrLbGZuW
Regards, rfg
In message <D12EFE8F-466E-4751-BF67-967C8696B4E4@beckman.org>, Mel Beckman <mel@beckman.org> wrote:
I’m just saying that I randomly checked one fact and it doesn’t meet the level of positive certainty that you asserted. It’s thus reasonable to ask you to double check your research all around. I’m not willing to be your unpaid copy editor, so let me know when you’ve done a double check and I’ll be willing to invest time in your story again.
Well, let's dissect that a bit. You're asserting an inadequate "level of positive certainty" but you have not specified about what, in particular. I posted a link to a list of 71 different RADB entries that were present in the Merit/RADB data base as of August 17th, all of which gave every appearance of having been created by Mr. Elad Cohen. I will assume for the moment that you are not calling into question the "positive certainty" that I have about any of that data or about any of those RADB entries. Out of those 71 routes, most of which appear to be rather clearly fradulent, you have picked out exactly and only -one- of those 71, and your only criticism seems to be that I haven't been quite precise enough in my identification of the exact victim, somewhere in Australia, in that one particular case. I just want to make sure that I understand. You're -not- claiming that either Mr. Cohen or FDCServers, or Cogent had any legitimate rights or titles to that specific block (139.44.0.0/16), correct? You are only claiming that I have mis-identified the victim of this particular squat as being `X' when I should more properly have said that the actual victim was in fact `Y'. Am I summarizing your criticism accurately? Regards, rfg P.S. Not that it matters to the point Mel raised, but I would like to just note in passing that the 139.44.0.0/16 block, may perhaps *not* in fact be routed by AS174 (Cogent) anymore, although it did appear to still be routed by AS17, at least to bgp.he.net, as of 05 Sep 2019 20:34 PST: https://bgp.he.net/net/139.44.0.0/16 More current data from RIPEStat indicates that this entire /16 is now being routed by Mr. Cohen's new good friends at AS204655, Novogara Ltd., which appears to be owned and operated by the same two sterling Dutch gentlemen, Mr. Ferdinand Reinier Van Eeden and Mr. Bartholomeus Johannes ("Bap") Karreman, who also appear to be the owners/operators of what is noadays called "IP Volume Inc." and which previously was known as Quasi Networks, and which was, before that, known as Ecatel. Novogara appears to have become home to quite a number of sizable IPv4 legacy blocks, from both the AFRINIC region and also the APNIC region, in very recent days: https://bgp.he.net/AS204655#_prefixes The fact that there seems to be a rather significant correlation between the IPv4 legacy blocks currently being announced by Mr. Van Eeden's and Mr. Karreman's several Dutch ASNs and the list of pilfered IPv4 legacy blocks that Mr. Cohen was kind enough to supply in the RADB data base should, in my opinion, come as a surprise to exactly no one.
participants (8)
-
Ben Cannon -
Carlos Friaças -
Christopher Morrow -
Florian Brandstetter -
Mel Beckman -
Neo Soon Keat -
Ronald F. Guilmette -
Suresh Ramasubramanian