Re: IPv4 Legacy assignment frustration

[Ray Soucy <rps () maine edu>]

Regardless of whether or not people "should" do this, I think the horse has
already left the barn on this one.  I don't see any way of getting people
who decided to filter all of APNIC to make changes.  Most of them are
static configurations that they'll never look to update.

On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Kraig Beahn <kraig () enguity com> wrote:

> The following might add some clarity, depending upon how you look at it:
>
> We, as "core" engineers know better than to use some of the sources listed
> below, tho, my suspicion is that when an engineer or local IT person, on an
> edge network starts to see various types of attacks, they play wack-a-mole,
> based upon outdated or incomplete data, and never think twice about
> revisiting such, as, from their perspective, everything is working just
> fine.
>
> In a networking psychology test, earlier this morning, I wrote to ten
> well-known colleagues that I was fairly confident didn't regularly follow
> the nanog lists. Such individuals comprised of IP and IT engineers for
> which manage various network sizes and enterprises, ultimately posing the
> question of "Where in the world is 150.201.15.7, as we were researching
> some unique traffic patterns".
>
> *Seven out of ten came back with overseas*. Two came back with more
> questions "as the address space appeared to be assigned to APNIC", but was
> routed domestically.
>
> *One came back with the correct response.* (MORENET)
>
> Two of the queried parties were representative of major networks, one for
> an entire state governmental network with hundreds of thousands of actual
> users and tens of thousands of routers, the other from another major
> university. (Names left out, in the event they see this message later in
> the day or week)
>
> After probing the origin of their responses, I found the following methods
> or data-sources were used:
>
> -Search Engines - by far, the worst offender. Not necessarily "the engines"
> at fault, but a result of indexed sites containing inaccurate or outdated
> CIDR lists.
> -User generated forums, such as  "Block non-North American Traffic for
> Dummies Like Me
> <https://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_spiders/4663915-2-30.htm>"
> (Yes - that's the actual thread name on WebMasterWorld.com, from a Sr.
> Member)
> -Static (or aged) CIDR web-page based lists, usually placed for advertorial
> generation purposes and rarely up to date or accurate. (usually via SE's or
> forum referrals)
> -APNIC themselves - A basic SE search resulted in an APNIC page
> <
> https://www.apnic.net/manage-ip/manage-historical-resources/erx-project/erx-ranges
> >
> that,
> on it's face, appears to indicate 150.0.0.0/8 is in fact, part of the
> current APNIC range.
> -GitHub BGP Ranking tools: CIRCL / bgp-ranging example
> <https://github.com/CIRCL/bgp-ranking/blob/master/lib/db_init/ip_del_list>
> (last
> updated on May 16th, 2011, tho an RT lookup
> <http://bgpranking.circl.lu/ip_lookup?ip=150.201.15.7> via the CIRCL tool
> does shows the appropriate redirect/org)
> -Several routing oriented books and Cisco examples
> <
> http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/integrated-intermediate-system-to-intermediate-system-is-is/13796-route-leak.pdf
> >
> list
> such range, for example, FR/ISBN 2-212-09238-5.
> -And even established ISPs, that are publically announcing their "block
> list
> <http://www.albury.net.au/netstatus/derouted.html>", such as Albury's
> Local
> ISP in Australia
>
> The simple answer is to point IT directors, IP engineers or "the
> receptionists that manages the network" to the appropriate registry
> data-source, which should convince them that corrective action is
> necessary, i.e. fix your routing table or firewall. The complexity begins
> in trying to locate all of these people and directing them to the
> appropriate data-source, which I think is an unrealistic task, even for the
> largest of operators. Maybe a nanog-edge group is in order.
>
> If the issue was beyond just a nuisance and If I were in your shoes, i'd
> renumber or use an alternate range for the types of traffic affected by
> such blocks, i.e. administrative web traffic trying to reach major
> insurance portals. (Looks like AS2572 is announcing just over 700k IPv4
> address, over about 43 ranges with only some potentially affected)
>
> Realizing that renumbering is also extremely unrealistic, if you haven't
> already reached the IPv6 bandwagon, that's an option or, if none of the
> above seem reasonable, you could always put together a one-page PDF that
> points these administrators to the appropriate resource to validate that
> you, are in fact, part of the domestic United States.
>
> I agree that a more accurate tool probably needs to be created for the
> "general population to consume," but then again, even that solution, is
> "just another tool" for the search-engines to index, and you're back at
> square one.
>
> As much as I think most of us would like to help fix this issue, I don't
> know that a decent, non-invasive solution exists, at least based upon the
> few hours we threw at this issue today...
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 10:37 AM, Tony Finch <dot () dotat at> wrote:
>
> > Spurling, Shannon <shannon () more net> wrote:
> >
> > > It’s a problem with the miss-use of the RIR delegation of a legacy
> > > block.
> > >
> > > The assumption that because a block is assigned to a particular RIR,
> all
> > > users in that block have to be in that RIR’s territory, without
> actually
> > > running a query against that RIR’s Whois database.
> >
> > Actually, a simple whois query often isn't enough to solve this problem.
> > Neither RIPE nor APNIC do proper whois referrals for IPv4 addresses that
> > are registered in other RIRs. ARIN, however, does.
> >
> > (However, if the geoip people are using whois data, I can't believe they
> > aren't handling cases like this properly, because it's blatantly obvious
> > if you scan IPv4 address space for referrals.)
> >
> >
> > If you use FreeBSD-CURRENT's whois client, it tries to work mostly by
> > following referrals, rather than using a built-in database mapping query
> > strings to whois servers. If you query for 150.199.0.0 (for example) you
> > get the following (which I have brutally trimmed for length):
> >
> > % IANA WHOIS server
> >
> > refer:        whois.apnic.net
> >
> > inetnum:      150.0.0.0 - 150.255.255.255
> > organisation: Administered by APNIC
> > status:       LEGACY
> >
> > % [whois.apnic.net]
> >
> > inetnum:        150.0.0.0 - 150.255.255.255
> > netname:        ERX-NETBLOCK
> > descr:          Early registration addresses
> >
> > remarks:        Address ranges from this historical space have now
> > remarks:        been transferred to the appropriate RIR database.remarks:
> > remarks:        If your search has returned this record, it means the
> > remarks:        address range is not administered by APNIC.
> > remarks:
> > remarks:        Instead, please search one of the following databases:
> >
> > (It then unhelpfully lists all the other RIRs.)
> >
> > FreeBSD's whois client spots this failure then retries the query at ARIN.
> >
> >
> > There's a similar problem with RIPE, for instance if you query for
> > 141.211.0.0:
> >
> > % IANA WHOIS server
> >
> > refer:        whois.ripe.net
> >
> > inetnum:      141.0.0.0 - 141.255.255.255
> > organisation: Administered by RIPE NCC
> > status:       LEGACY
> >
> > % This is the RIPE Database query service.
> >
> > inetnum:        141.209.0.0 - 141.225.255.255
> > netname:        NON-RIPE-NCC-MANAGED-ADDRESS-BLOCK
> > descr:          IPv4 address block not managed by the RIPE NCC
> >
> > remarks:        You can find the whois server to query, or the
> > remarks:        IANA registry to query on this web page:
> > remarks:        http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space
> > remarks:
> > remarks:        You can access databases of other RIRs at:
> >
> > (It then unhelpfully lists all the other RIRs.)
> >
> > Actually RIPE is even worse than APNIC because it implicitly has a
> > referral loop between IANA and RIPE.
> >
> >
> > BUT NOTE!
> >
> > The APNIC and RIPE databases do in fact contain the referral information
> -
> > you can get it via RDAP but not whois. Repeating the examples,
> >
> > $ curl -i https://rdap.apnic.net/ip/150.199.0.0
> > HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
> > Location: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/150.199.0.0
> >
> > $ curl -i https://rdap.db.ripe.net/ip/141.211.0.0
> > HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
> > Location: https://rdap.arin.net/registry/ip/141.211.0.0
> >
> >
> > Tony.
> > --
> > f.anthony.n.finch  <dot () dotat at>  http://dotat.at/  -  I xn--zr8h
> > punycode
> > Biscay: Cyclonic becoming mainly northwest, 4 or 5. Moderate. Fog
> patches,
> > thundery showers. Moderate, occasionally very poor.
>
>
>
> --



-- 
Ray Patrick Soucy
Senior Cyber Security Engineer
Networkmaine, University of Maine System US:IT

207-561-3526