I was logged into my Cloudflare account today attempting to setup Tunnels when I noticed various security events related to my domain. Upon further inspection I realized that they all originated from a Microsoft Owned IP address (I’m assuming somebody running a Azure VM instance).
Looking into the actual request headers I can see that whatever bot was running was looking for common PHP exploits or unsecured endpoints.
I usually ignore such instances as I have proper firewall rules both on the Cloudflare side as well as my local network side so I’m doubting there’s actually any threat to my network. However, I decided today to email the abuse contact provided from the WHOIS details. Was wondering if anybody else had experience with writing these? Is it even worth writing them or do they just end up being a waste of time?
Edit: Thanks everybody for the responses! Seems that it’s up in the air if I’ll ever get a response back. Maybe that’s okay - Looks like the general consensus is that these usually do end up getting taken seriously (at least by some providers). I guess I’ll keep composing away even if it’s just an exercise in good internet stewardship :)
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I’ve actually done this for a Microsoft owned IP before. Someone was Wordpress-scanning a particularly fragile application of one of my clients (which was not Wordpress) which was causing it to fall over. The scan stopped within an hour of sending the abuse email.
Edit to add: I used to work in a NOC for a tier 1 ISP. We had an “abuse department” (a couple people) that investigated these and opened tickets with the NOC. I’ve emailed customers and disconnected circuits as a result of abuse emails, so I wouldn’t say they’re totally useless, but I’m sure it depends on the company involved.
I used to work in a NOC for a tier 1 ISP. We had an “abuse department” (a couple people) that investigated these and opened tickets with the NOC. I’ve emailed customers and disconnected circuits as a result of abuse emails, so I wouldn’t say they’re totally useless, but I’m sure it depends on the company involved.
I also worked at an ISP for a period, actually worked at two different ones. The first one let the abuse mailbox go full, because no one was reading it. The second they were reading it, but mostly to find new places to download stuff :D
Wait, what? To their abuse@microsoft.com or whatever email (whatever’s listed in whois)?
I’ve had Azure IPs absolutely hammering my VoIP server and absolutely none of the reports I sent were even acknowledged. Ended up just blocking the entire Azure CIDR range in the firewall.
AWS, OTOH, got back to me within about an hour and a resolution within 3.
Yep! Just for whatever the abuse contact was in whois. Could have been coincidence, or maybe just whoever was on shift in Azure town at the time. I don’t remember if I got a response or not from MS.
About 20 years ago I was running a phpnuke site on my home server and had someone doing the same thing as you describe. Hundreds of attempts over and over all night long. I went through the logs and saw it was someone on intelsat (I think, it’s been a long time) internet from Africa. I called intelsat or whoever the company was and talked to their system admin that was on call. Within 20 mins of getting off the phone the attack stopped and never happened again. They guy I talked to was really nice and seemed like he was happy to be able to help me.
Why the f*** is someone using Intelsat for that. That must be so fucking expensive (for the victim of the bot) and slow for the hacker.
I wondered the same thing at the time it had to have been ungodly expensive unless it was a stolen device. I can’t remember for sure if it was intelsat or one of the other companies that was around at the time but it was a sat connection. I was also running that webserver on a really bad dsl line. I lived right next door to the phone company CO but was at the end of the line. I had to go with an independent isp because the phone company said it was too far and wouldn’t work. It did work but was super unreliable.
Very likely a stolen device. Or a mining camp with shared access.
I can feel the heart attack they had when opening their phone bill next month…
Holy shit!
a phpnuke site
Wow, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a loooong time. I remember running PHP-Nuke sites on PHP 4.
I used to really like running it. I had quite a lot of aggregated content on that site.
Yea, I have submitted multiple abuse emails with details to domain registrars for scamming and phishing.
Didn’t receive any update from them on any action taken yet.
I have in the past, yes. Reputable hosts and cloud providers tend to take them seriously in my experience.
It depends how vindictive I’m feeling and how blatant/annoying the abuse is. In some cases it is easier to just block the IP and move on. When I do I have gotten mixed results. AWS and Google (usually reporting gmail spammers) are usually pretty responsive.
I did try to automate abuse emails via fail2ban, but that ended up getting my entire domain removed because it generated so many emails
I’ve tried to deal with several vendors regarding abusive domains and it’s pretty terrible in general. Everything is a webform with a generic responder - if any at all - and then weeks or months or nothing. Even domains impersonating proper commercial entities.
- GoDaddy: here’s the real domain, now here’s the domain registered via you, cloned from the real domain (including text, corporate logos, etc with some additional chinese crap) and being used for phishing/scams. Their response: “fill out this bullshit form that goes nowhere”
- CloudFlare: “uh, we don’t actually host the site (just the DNS and “protection” service that hides who does) sorry” Google: “we’ll continue showing the scam/phishing domain in top search results after your reports because apparently accurate search results aren’t actually our thing”
I don’t even bother trying with cloudflare. They refused to stop their ddos protection on actual neonazi sites and misinformation sites, so I have no hope that they’ll deal with basic abuse complaints. Clearly they’re not concerned with the harms their system enabled.
+1 for send it. I’ve only had one in 5 ignored. You can kind of guess who’s going to ignore it if you look at the website of the tld you’re emailing.
I did it in a security incident last year. It took down attacker command and control infrastructure, hindering their operations not just against my company but half a dozen others which had made the news. I found out later about the others on Twitter. After that I became much more positive about the worth of abuse reports.
I actually do side work for a nonprofit that provides free web hosting. At least with my organization, sending an abuse report will get the user’s account suspended until they can look at it. If what they were doing was blatantly illegal (e.g. a phishing site), they just get banned entirely. I’m one of 2 or 3 people who deals with the reports.
On the other side as someone sending reports, I can say that some companies care more than others. I’ve had success getting abuse taken down from 1&1, Hostinger, and Microsoft. That said, I’ve had GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, and a few others ignore abuse reports entirely, and I had Weebly actively refuse to remove a phishing site.
My experience is that hosting companies tends to be more responsive than domain registrars at getting abuse removed, if you can figure out who is hosting the content behind the domain. The annoying part is that most just use cloudflare these days to hide the origin.
I’ve done it a couple times. Based on what I’m reading from other users, I guess I got lucky with one, because I got back a personal response thanking me and assuring the abusive whatever was dealt with.
Yeah, I’ve sent one to like, limestone network maybe? Or some other similar host. They responded within a few hours and the scans stopped from their IPs for a long time. Just provide logs of whatever you see. The NOC will be able to confirm or deny pretty quickly and take appropriate action.
I work at a mid-size ISP. Abuse emails are getting looking at. However, please include relevant details in your messages. Many emails simply say “stop what you’re doing” without any specifics, even attack source IP.
I treat it like free data to train my firewall on. It’s just a fact of being on the Internet, endless bots scanning everything. Not worth your time, it’s endless whack-a-mole. They’ll just keep coming.
At work, I have a bot that bans an IP every couple minutes for common attacks and scans, it’s wild.
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