Re: Cogent Abuse - Bogus Propagation of ASN 36471

[Mike Hammett <nanog () ics-il net>]

If they (or anyone else) want to give me free service to use as I see fit (well, legally), I'll gladly accept their 
offer. 




----- 
Mike Hammett 
Intelligent Computing Solutions 
http://www.ics-il.com 

Midwest-IX 
http://www.midwest-ix.com 

----- Original Message -----

From: "Tom Beecher" <beecher () beecher cc> 
To: "Matthew Petach" <mpetach () netflight com> 
Cc: nanog () nanog org 
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2023 11:38:50 AM 
Subject: Re: Cogent Abuse - Bogus Propagation of ASN 36471 




In short--I'm having a hard time understanding how a non-paying entity still has working connectivity and BGP sessions, 
which makes me suspect there's a different side to this story we're not hearing yet. ^_^; 





I know Cogent has long offered very cheap transit prices, but this seems very aggressive! :) 


On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 12:28 PM Matthew Petach < mpetach () netflight com > wrote: 

<blockquote>






On Thu, Jul 20, 2023 at 8:09 AM Pete Rohrman < prohrman () stage2networks com > wrote: 

<blockquote>


Ben, 
Compromised as in a nefarious entity went into the router and changed passwords and did whatever. Everything advertised 
by that comprised router is bogus. The compromised router is owned by OrgID: S2NL (now defunct). AS 36471 belongs to 
KDSS-23 . The compromised router does not belong to Kratos KDSS-23 , and is causing routing problems. The compromised 
router needs to be shut down. The owner of the compromised router ceased business, and there isn't anyone around to 
address this at S2NL. The only people that can resolve this is Cogent. Cogent's defunct customer's router was 
compromised, and is spewing out bogus advertisements. 

Pete 
</blockquote>





Hi Pete, 


This seems a bit confusing. 


So, S2NL was a bill-paying customer of Cogent with a BGP speaking router. 
They went out of business, and stopped paying their Cogent bills. 
Cogent, out of the goodness of their hearts, continued to let a non-paying customer keep their connectivity up and 
active, and continued to freely import prefixes across BGP neighbors from this non-paying defunct customer. 
Now, someone else has gained access to this non-paying, defunct customer's router (which Cogent is still providing free 
connectivity to, out of the goodness of their hearts), and is generating RPKI-valid announcements from it, which have 
somehow not caused a flurry of messages on the outages list about prefix hijackings. 


The elements to your claim don't really seem to add up. 
1) ISPs aren't famous for letting non-bill-paying customers stay connected for very long past the grace period on their 
billing cycle, let alone long after the company has gone belly-up. 
2) It's not impossible to generate RPKI-valid announcements from a hijacked network, but it's very difficult to 
generate *bogus* RPKI-valid announcements from a compromised router--that's the whole point of RPKI, to be able to 
validate that the prefixes being announced from an origin are indeed the ones that are owned by that origin. 


Can you provide specific prefix and AS_PATH combinations being originated by that router that are "bogus" and don't 
belong to the router's ASN? 


If, however, what you meant is that the router used to be ASN XXXXX, and is now suddenly showing up as ASN 36471, and 
Cogent happily changed their BGP neighbor statements to match the new ASN, even though the entity no longer exists and 
hasn't been paying their bills for some time, then that would imply a level of complicity on Cogent's part that would 
make them unlikely to respond to your abuse reports. That would be a very strong allegation to make, and the necessary 
level of documented proof of that level of malfeasance would be substantial. 


In short--I'm having a hard time understanding how a non-paying entity still has working connectivity and BGP sessions, 
which makes me suspect there's a different side to this story we're not hearing yet. ^_^; 


Thanks! 


Matt 









<blockquote>


<blockquote>

<blockquote>

</blockquote>

</blockquote>

</blockquote>

</blockquote>