Prosecutors allege Micfo obtained 800k IPv4 addresses illegally

[masayoshis_son]

The writing is quite confusing in trying to explain things but the gist of it appears to be that the person in question (1) applied for IP addresses through numerous companies created just for this purpose in order to bypass ARIN's restriction on the number of addresses it was willing to allocate to a single entity, and (2) made the obtained IP address ranges available to serve as VPN endpoints, so that "huge amount of traffic—some of it illicit or criminal—passed through its computer servers but wasn't traceable to the true originators."

He did keep track though of which VPN operator used which range at any given time, so perhaps the "true originators" could be traceable after all, assuming the VPN owners were willing to co-operate. In any case, he is only being prosecuted for (1), and the immediate reason for this is that a couple of US politicians were hacked with attacks originating from these addresses.

[londons_explore]

A prosecution seems a bit over the top for this... Setting up multiple companies to meet some rule isnt against said rule. And anyway, it's a company policy not the law.

[nmc]

https://archive.is/2f9pz

[krebsonsecurity]

This story looks familiar. Oh wait: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/05/a-tough-week-for-ip-addr...

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

Relevant post by a former Mifco employee: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22360642

[neonate]

https://archive.md/2f9pz

[checkyoursudo]

I can come up with at least 3 distinct meanings for “amassed VPN clients” and I’m still not 100% sure which is correct in this context. I take it that clients here refers to “paying customers”?

[nicolaslem]

> He said Micfo provides a legitimate service to VPNs, adding that whatever his customers or their users do through Micfo servers is none of his business.

From what I understand he was attributed many IPs by creating shell companies and rented these IPs to VPN providers.

[dang]

A related thread is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22360642.

[lmilcin]

If anybody is interested I have a database of roughly 4B IPv4 addresses for sale:)

[qz_]

Would you mind sharing your email address?

[esotericn]

Could you please remove mine under article 17 of the GDPR? :D

[johnklos]

I wish HN had a filter which would block all posts which link to sites which require subscriptions.

[dang]

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread, and did so in this one.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

[_-___________-_]

Hmm.

I "obtained" 2^32 IPv4 addresses pretty easily; not sure if it's legitimate or not:

  for addr in range(2**32):
    print('.'.join([str(addr >> (i << 3) & 0xFF) for i in range(4)[::-1]]))

Edit: Well, this was unpopular. In case it's too subtle, my point is that the title is terrible.

[0x0]

Your script doesn't seem to assign any of the printed IPs to ASNs registered to you, so your joke kind of misses the mark a bit.

[skywhopper]

The concept of ownership of an IP address, implied by “obtains”, is pretty clear and well-understood. The story was exactly what I imagined after reading the headline. Rather than making an obtuse joke, how would you suggest it be improved?