Washington Post: Atrivo/Intercage, why are we peering with the American RBN?

Fri Aug 29 20:02:25 UTC 2008

Hi all.

This Washington Post story came out today:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/08/report_slams_us_host_as_major.html

In it, Brian Krebs discusses the SF Bay Area based Atrivo/Intercage, which 
has been long named as a bad actor, accused of shuffling abuse reports to 
different IP addresses and hosting criminals en masse, compared often to 
RBN in maliciousness. "The American RBN", if you like.

1. I realize this is a problematic issue, but when it is clear a network 
is so evil (as the story suggests they are), why are we still peering with 
them? Who currently provides them with transit? Are they aware of this 
news story?

If Lycos' make spam not war, and Blue Security's blue frog were ran out of 
hosting continually, this has been done before to some extent. This 
network is not in Russia or China, but in the silicon valley.

2. On a different note, why is anyone still accepting their route 
announcements? I know some among us re-route RBN traffic to protect users. 
Do you see this as a valid solution for your networks?

What ASNs belong to Atrivo, anyway?

Anyone has more details as to the apparent evilness of Atrivo/Intercage, 
who can verify these reports? As researched as they are, and my personal 
experience aside, I'd like some more data before coming to conclusions.

Hostexploit released a document [PDF] on this very network, just now, 
which is helpful:
http://hostexploit.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12&Itemid=15

 	Gadi.