BGP list of phishing sites?

Mon Jun 28 17:56:11 UTC 2004

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Scott Call wrote:

> On the the things the article mentioned is that ISP/NSPs are shutting off 
> access to the web site in russia where the malware is being downloaded 
> from.
> 
> Now we've done this in the past when a known target of a DDOS was upcoming 
> or a known website hosted part of a malware package, and it is fairly 
> effective in stopping the problems.
> 
> So what I was curious about is would there be interest in a BGP feed (like 
> the DNSBLs used to be) to null route known malicious sites like that?
> 
> Obviously, both operational guidelines, and trust of the operator would 
> have to be established, but I was thinking it might be useful for a few 
> purposes:
> 
> 1> IP addresses of well known sources of malicious code (like in the 
> example above)
> 2> DDOS mitigation (ISP/NSP can request a null route of a prefix which 
> will save the "Internet at large" as well as the NSP from the traffic 
> flood
> 3> etc
> 
> Since the purpose of this list would be to identify and mitigate large 
> scale threats, things like spammers, etc would be outside of it's charter.
> 
> If anyone things this is a good (or bad) idea, please let me know. 
> Obviously it's not fully cooked yet, but I wanted to throw it out there.

Personally - bad.

So what do you want to include in this list.. phishing? But why not add bot C&C, 
bot clients, spam sources, child porn, warez sites. Or if you live in a censored 
region add foreign political sites, any porn, or other messages deemed bad.

Who maintains the feed, who checks the sites before adding them, who checks them 
before removing them. 

What if the URL is a subdir of a major website such as aol.com or ebay.com or
angelfire.com ... what if the URL is a subdir of a minor site, such as yours or 
mine? 

What if there is some other dispute over a null'ed IP, suppose they win, can 
they be compensated?

Does this mean the banks and folks dont have to continue to remove these threats
now if the ISP does it? Does it mean the bank can sue you if you fail to do it? 

What if you leak the feed at your borders, I may not want to take this from you
and now I'm accidentally null routing it to you. Should you leak this to
downstream ASNs? Should you insist your Tier1 provides it and leaks it to you?.. 
just you or all customers?

What if someone mistypes an IP and accidentally nulls something real bad(TM)? 
What if someone compromises the feeder and injects prefixes maliciously?

What about when the phishers adapt and start changing DNS to point to different
IPs quickly, will the system react quicker? Does that mean you apply less checks 
in order to get the null route out quicker? Is it just /32s or does it need to 
be larger prefixes in the future? Are there other ways conceivable to beat such 
a system if it became widespread (compare to spammer tactics)

What if this list gets to be large? Do we want huge amounts of /32s in our 
internal routing tables?

What if the feeder becomes a focus of attacks by those wishing to carry out 
phishing or other illegal activities? This has certainly become a hazard with 
spam RBLs.

Any other thoughts?

Steve