[AusNOG] Confirmation of govt blackholing. Was: Re: Understanding lack of Aus connectivity to melbournefreeuniversity.org.

Joshua D'Alton joshua at railgun.com.au
Wed May 15 22:49:20 EST 2013


Great firewall of china here we come.


On Wed, May 15, 2013 at 10:33 PM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:

> A quick final update to this mystery from last month.
>
> The office of the Communications Minister confirmed last night that this
> IP was blackholed (by AAPT and perhaps others) after the Australian
> Securities and Investment Commission sent a notice under Section 313 for
> "an IP address that was linked to a fraud website".
>
> "Melbourne Free University’s website was hosted at the same IP address as
> the fraud website, and was unintentionally blocked. Once ASIC were made
> aware of what had happened, they lifted the original blocking request."
>
> (See
> http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/15/interpol-filter-scope-creep-asic-ordering-unilateral-website-blocks/ for
> more details)
>
> I'll try and keep this note as operational as I can: ISPs should be aware
> that more than one government regulator are now claiming to have the legal
> ability to demand Australian ISPs block upstream IPs. There's no defined
> limit under 313 on who might place these requests.
>
> ISPs obeying these notices also appear to believe that they cannot report
> on these blocks (even when the regulator in question puts out its own press
> releases declaring their intentions:
> http://www.asic.gov.au/asic/asic.nsf/byheadline/13-061MR+ASIC+warns+consumers+about+Global+Capital+Wealth?openDocument
>  ).
>
> I don't currently see any judicial oversight of this system, transparency,
> or possibility of redress either for ISPs or for their customers. The only
> reason ASIC were "made aware" that they were blocking innocent Australians
> was because MFU reached out to numerous groups to find out what was going
> on, and were refused details by both ISPs and government. The only reason
> Conroy's office made a statement now, it appears, is because Renai Lemay
> and others essentially forced the issue.
>
> And unlike the recent vigorous discussions over the ACMA blacklist, where
> ISPs and Australians were given the opportunity to discuss the pros and
> cons, there has been no public debate. No-one, including it seems many
> ISPs, were aware that IP blocking through BGP blackholes was a government
> power.
>
> I'd like to thank everyone who helped get to the bottom of this --
> especially those in the networking community that told us that ASIC might
> be the cause.
>
> If you'd like to talk with me at the Electronic Frontier Foundation or the
> folks at the Electronic Frontiers Australia about pushing back against
> these expansions of government power over ISPs, do get in touch on my work
> address, which is danny at eff.org.
>
> From historic experience, accepting these orders without protest is going
> to encourage more parts of government to seek their own censorship powers,
> and unless you join others in pushing back, I fear network operators are
> going to find themselves complicit in doing the very opposite of what they
> promise their users, which is still providing great connectivity with the
> rest of the Net.
>
> Thanks again for your time,
>
> d.
> International Director, EFF.
>
> On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Danny O'Brien <danny at spesh.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi AusNOG,
>>
>> Apologies for the interruption -- I work for the Electronic Frontier
>> Foundation in the US, and usually lurk on the NANOG lists, asking the
>> occasional curious question about once a decade (Including "Where did Egypt
>> just go?" http://seclists.org/nanog/2011/Jan/1416 and "What happens when
>> Ripe.net doesn't pay their domain fees?"
>> http://seclists.org/nanog/1998/Apr/50 ).
>>
>> My question to this even more distinguished audience is a little
>> narrower:
>>
>> We got a message from Melbourne Free University yesterday, whose site
>> hosted at 198.136.54.104 in the US was unavailable from Optus and Telstra
>> consumer users.
>>
>> It looks to me that this specific IP is being patchily blackholed, mostly
>> from Australian addresses. My working assumption is that this is due to
>> DDOS mitigation.
>>
>> The reason why Melbourne Free University got in touch with us, though,
>> was that when they contacted their own broadband service provider., Exetel,
>> to complain, their support eventually told them that upstream, AAPT, was
>> blocking it due to an Australian government request, and could say no more
>> about it. (The ticket is below.)
>>
>> MFU is understandably a bit disturbed by such a statement from their ISP,
>> as are we. I *am* at this stage assuming miscommunication rather than
>> government action. I've reached out to AAPT and Exetel, and been banging on
>> BGP looking glasses and traceroutes all day, and not getting much response,
>> so I thought I'd broaden out the query and ask you all:
>>
>> 1) Is anyone here blackholing 198.136.54.104 or the /20 (though I've seen
>> people being able to reach .103 and .105 fine, but lose 104) for DDOS or
>> other operational reasons?
>>
>> 2) Hypothetically, can anyone suggest a Federal court order or government
>> process that would lead to such a blackhole for *non*-operational reasons?
>>
>> Thank you for your attention -- I hope your curiousity is as piqued as
>> mine was.
>>
>> d.
>>
>> >     Please note that we regret to inform that the IP address has been
>> blocked
>> >     by Australian authority for undisclosed reasons.
>> >
>> >     As per our supplier, due to the legal department our supplier is
>> unable to
>> >     share any information regarding the blocking of the IP address.
>> Therefore
>> >     we are not able to provide the details regarding who has blocked
>> the IP or
>> >     why because the supplier wont provide these info.
>> >
>> >     Also note that our supplier is unable to have this IP unblocked.
>> >
>> >     Level 1 - Network Support Engineer
>> >     Exetel Pty Ltd
>>
>>
>>  Here is the route taken by an Exetel consumer subscriber using the AAPT
>> network attempting to access the site.
>>
>>       > $ traceroute www.melbournefreeuniversity.org
>>       > traceroute to melbournefreeuniversity.org (198.136.54.104), 64
>> hops max, 40
>>       > byte packets
>>       >  1  XXXXXXXXXXXXX (192.168.1.254)  1 ms  1 ms  1 ms
>>       >  2  XXX.XXX.96.58.static.exetel.com.au (58.96.XXX.XXX)  18 ms
>> 19 ms  18 ms
>>       >  3  33.2.96.58.static.exetel.com.au (58.96.2.33)  19 ms  18 ms
>> 19 ms
>>       >  4  pe-5017370-mburninte01.gw.aapt.com.au (203.174.186.73)  24
>> ms  20 ms
>>       > 20 ms
>>       >  5  te3-3.mburndist01.aapt.net.au (203.131.61.30) [MPLS: Label
>> 190 Exp 1]
>>       > 35 ms  35 ms  31 ms
>>       >  6  te0-3-4-0.mburncore01.aapt.net.au (202.10.12.15) [MPLS:
>> Label 17412 Exp
>>       >  7  bu2.sclarcore01.aapt.net.au (202.10.10.74) [MPLS: Label
>> 16702 Exp 1]
>>       > More labels  49 ms More labels  32 ms More labels  31 ms
>>       >  8  te2-2.sclardist01.aapt.net.au (202.10.12.2) [MPLS: Label 895
>> Exp 1]  31
>>       > ms  32 ms  33 ms
>>       >  9  * po6.sclarbrdr01.aapt.net.au (202.10.14.3)  30 ms *
>>       > 10  * * *
>>       > 11  * * *
>>
>>   Here is the route taken by a Telstra subscriber in Brisbane.
>>
>>       >  $ traceroute to www.melbournefreeuniversity.org <
>> http://www.melbournefreeuniversity.org> (198.136.54.104), 30 hops max,
>> 60 byte packets
>>       >  1  10.205.XX.XX (10.205.XX.XX)  8.936 ms  8.989 ms  8.977 ms
>>       >  2  58.160.XX.XX (58.160.XX.XX)  9.349 ms  9.425 ms  9.482 ms
>>       >  3  58.160.XX.XX (58.160.XX.XX)  9.705 ms  9.765 ms  9.753 ms
>>       >  4  172.18.241.105 (172.18.241.105)  12.691 ms  12.817 ms  12.705
>> ms
>>       >  5  bundle-ether10-woo10.brisbane.telstra.net (110.142.226.13)
>> 15.426 ms  15.482 ms  14.644 ms
>>       >  6  bundle-ether3.woo-core1.brisbane.telstra.net (203.50.11.52)
>> 17.872 ms  12.953 ms  13.940 ms
>>       >  7  bundle-ether11.chw-core2.sydney.telstra.net (203.50.11.70)
>> 25.653 ms  26.135 ms  26.054 ms
>>       >  8  bundle-ether1.pad-gw1.sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.25)
>> 27.017 ms  27.078 ms  27.072 ms
>>       >  9  gigabitethernet0-2.pad-service2.sydney.telstra.net(203.50.6.70)  24.064 ms  24.129 ms  24.111 ms
>>       > 10  * *
>>       > 11   *
>>       > 12   *
>>       > 13   *
>>
>>
>>
>
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