In a post to the venerable NANOG list (mirrored since to Dave Farber's Interesting People list), anti-spam researcher Ronald F. Guilmette posts the results of his investigation into the IP addresses claimed by a mysterious company called host-offshore.com — IP addresses assigned to "various parties within the nation of Columbia (including the National University thereof)" but, strangely, routed through Bulgaria.
host-offshore.com is a pretty shady enterprise, but what's more interesting is just how brazen they are; as Guilmette douments, they don't even bother with the minimal steps that would give their IP hijacking the thinnest veneer of plausibility.
Personally, I don't really give a rat's ass if this site is just a cover
for some inept criminals, or for Panstani ISI, or for the FSB, or for
some of Putin's patriots, or even if it belongs to the NSA. But I cannot
help but bemoan the fact that here we are, and it is 2017 already, and
yet, whichever bunch of lame-ass jerks are in fact behind this thing,
apparently aren't even capable of slapping together a cover web site
that is more than just some entirely shallow and not very effective false
front.As a researcher and student of such things, I just think that by now,
in 2017, we should have a somewhat more skilled class of frauds, rogues,
criminals and spies on the Internet. I mean this is just baby stuff,
and it only takes a couple of minutes and few clicks to see past such
transparent gibberish.So c'mon all ye criminals, rogues and spys! You need to up your game
fer cryin' out loud! At least present us with something a bit more
challenging than -this- kind of very superflous crap. I mean, have you
no self-respect?
IP Hijacking For Dummies [Ronald F. Guilmette/NANOG]
