nanog mailing list archives

RE: abuse reporting tools


From: Drew Weaver <drew.weaver () thenap com>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 20:11:43 +0000

On Tue, Nov 18, 2014 at 7:41 PM, Robert Drake <rdrake () direcpath com> wrote:
On 11/18/2014 8:11 PM, Michael Brown wrote:
[snip]
amelioration.  So I'm left with a very unsatisfactory feeling of 
either shutting down a possibly innocent customer based on a machines 
word, or attempting to start a dialog with random_script_user_99 () hotmail com.

Under those circumstances,  how do you know it's not a
social-engineering based DoS being attempted?   Preferably,  take no
action to shutdown services without decent confirmation;  as malicious reports of a fraudulent, bogus, dramatized, or 
otherwise misleading nature are sometimes used by malicious actors  to target a legitimate user.

My suggestion would be table the report of a single SSH connection and
really do nothing with it.    If there is actually abuse being
conducted, you should either be able to independently verify the actual abuse, e.g.  by checking packet level data or 
netflow data, or  you should begin to receive a pattern of complaints;  more unique contacts,  that you can 
investigate and verify are legit. contacts >>from unique networks.

If you know the destination IP address that the traffic is supposedly going to you can also just ACL it, that way if 
it's a customer of a customer you don't shut down the customer's entire business over something one person downstream 
is doing and you 'fix' the issue at the same time.

The right answer really depends on how responsive your customer is to the complaints in the first place.

-Drew

Current thread: