Joint statement from Directi, HostExploit and Kunujon

In light of recent developments, Jart Armin of HostExploit.com Bhavin Turakhia, CEO of Directi and Garth Bruen of Knujon have had an open dialogue and mutually agreed to release this joint statement clearing any previous misconceptions and reaffirming their common goal to combat abuse on the Internet. Here are few of the points they would like to jointly make -

* Directi, HostExploit, Knujon recognize and confirm that they share the common goal of continuing to combat spam and abuse on the Internet through cooperation, collaboration and proactive action. In conversation yesterday, Directi, HostExploit and Knujon agreed to publish this statement to clarify any misconceptions and affirm their mutual commitment to work closely to combat abuse.

* Directi clarified to HostExploit that, LogicBoxes (a Directi business) is not hosting any of Atrivo's websites. Atrivo runs its web infrastructure under the name of Hostfresh.com which is not affiliated with Directi in any manner.

* Directi also confirmed that ESTDomains is not a Directi company, and Directi does not control the actions or clients of ESTDomains, a fact that HostExploit was already aware of.

* HostExploit confirms that its report was not meant to allege that LogicBoxes is directly sponsoring Internet abuse, rather its report was meant, in good faith, only to provide relevant parties with all information and data which can be used to clean up websites that were violating principles of ethical behavior. HostExploit hopes that other Internet news sites which may have taken the data in the HostExploit report out of context in assuming that LogicBoxes is directly affiliated with Atrivo rectify this misconception. Directi confirms that LogicBoxes is simply a software provider to various ICANN Accredited Registrars, and its only role was providing software for domain registration and DNS management.

* HostExploit and Knujon did share with Directi a separate list of additional web sites known for badware that belong to Atrivo, enabling Directi's abuse team to swiftly suspend them. Directi HostExploit and Knujon intend to continue this information exchange to speedily resolve abuse issues, and to further demonstrate transparency the community can contact either Directi or / and HostExploit to ensure action is taken.

* Directi has clarified that privacyprotect.org is merely a privacy protection service used by many of Directi's legitimate clients, not unlike the privacy protection services offered by other Registrars. Directi further confirmed that privacy protection had already been disabled on a large percentage of Atrivo's domain names over a month ago. Since Directi offers privacy protection free of cost, there are miscreants who use it to cloak their malicious activities. However Directi reaffirmed that its abuse team will suspend privacy protection on any domain for which they receive a genuine complaint in less than 24 hours. In fact a few months ago, based on reports and data obtained from the antispam community, Directi ceased to offer its privacy protection services to all customers of ESTDomains and to tens of thousands of other domains obtained through the community. Currently over half a million genuine customers of Directi use privacy protection services to prevent their whois data from being harvested.

* Directi affirms they are in no way supporting illicit online pharmacies. KnujOn has sent a list of newly populated fake pharmacy domains that Directi suspended. Directi and KnujOn now jointly call on the Internet community, private industry, and government to help develop policy and methods to put a stop to the fake pharmacy menace since Registrars cannot do this alone.

* Knujon acknowledges that the 48 Registrars that it thought were phantom are actually in existence as Delaware incorporated legitimate companies with a valid ICANN Accreditation and accurate contact information. Knujon's confusion stemmed from the fact that ICANN does not require these companies to publically report their incorporation details.

* Directi and HostExploit have discussed further ways to enhance their cooperative collaboration to clamp down spam and other forms of abuse on the Internet as rapidly as possible. Directi acknowledges and applauds HostExploit continuous efforts in tracking down miscreants. HostExploit and Knujon confirms that they are pleased to work directly with the Directi abuse desk in helping Directi identify any miscreants that maybe using Directi's services. The partnership includes sharing investigative processes and intelligence data on an ongoing basis.

Together with the community we hope to continue taking steps to make the Internet a better and safer place.

Report Slams U.S. Host as Major Source of Badware

In a new study entitled "Atrivo - Cyber Crime USA", the authors have extensively tracked and documented ongoing cyber criminal activity from within the Internet servers controlled by the California-based Atrivo, and other associated entities. Atrivo is one of the Internet's Autonomous Systems and controls a large number of IP addresses, which web sites must use to reach consumers.

Produced by cyber crime researcher Jart Armin, in association with Matt Jonkman and James McQuaid, the first of its kind Open Source Security study set out to quantify and continuously track cyber crime using numerous methods of measurement. It focuses specifically on the notorious Atrivo, which has been seen by many over several years as a main conduit for financial scams, identity theft, spam and malware. This study although fully self contained is the first of a series of reports, on a monthly basis there will be a follow up to report on the community response, the efforts of the cyber criminals to evade exposure, listings to assist in blocking the risks to Internet users, and hopefully efforts to stop them.

In addition to original quantitative research conducted by Armin, Jonkman and McQuaid, the study draws upon the findings of other research efforts, including StopBadware, EmergingThreats, Knujon, Sunbelt, CastleCops, Spamhaus, and many others. What emerges is a picture of a front for ruthless cyber criminals, who have specifically targeted consumers in the United States and elsewhere. The study provides hard data regarding specific current activity within Atrivo, explains how consumers are targeted, describes Atrivo's virtual network structure, organizational modeling, and cites Atrivo's collusive failure to respond to abuse complaints from 2004 to the present. The study includes three dimensional charts, diagrams, and a YouTube video which make it easy to grasp the statistics or processes discussed.

Document available for download from hostexploit.com

Video of the Exploitation of a PC User - YouTube

Press reviews:

Washington Post - Review

The Top 25 World's Exploit Hosts and Servers - Issue 1: The Base

The Top 25 World's Exploit Hosts and Servers, deals with a holistic problem, requiring a holistic solution, "HostExploit.com" will attempt to be part of the solution.

With the increasing subversion of the DNS (Domain Name System) by the now widespread automated domain generation in the 100’s to 1,000’s per week by the exploiters. This combined with the usage of armies of virtually untraceable P2P (Peer to Peer) directed botnets and undetectable polymorphic viruses and malware. It may appear increasingly difficult for the community to even block such threats let alone reduce them. This involves the whole area of internet security and network security.

Table 1. - The Top25 World's Exploit Hosts and Servers

However, this route is controversial and hitherto a taboo subject; i.e. the hosts, registrars, and servers. Whether it is; spam, exploits, malware, spyware or even botnet control, the domains are registered, the web sites are hosted or served by an organization, i.e. the 'web host' and are assigned an AS # (Autonomous System) by ICANN. To commence we begin exposing the 'Top 25 World's Exploit Hosts and Servers' these alone serve and provide an estimated 80%+ of all the bad stuff on the Internet, infect; good servers, good websites, and overall are a scourge to the average internet user .

Why controversial or taboo?

- It is complex - Yes it is, however through already man years worth of detailed research and even more community references we will partition into manageable chunks. So will add downloadable lists, rules, block information, and educational explanation where possible . Commencing as we do here with a top down 'peeling the onion' approach.

- It involves big money, in most cases many $millions - As we unfold this subject we will provide focused details on a particular 'Exploiting Host' with the economics involved, where possible. It is our view that because an organization makes a great deal of money and exploits or spams the average user, whether 'intentional exploiters' e.g. Atrivo or 'allowed themselves to be highly infected' e.g. The Planet, does not exclude it from exposure.

- Many innocent or grey web sites may suffer due to the few - this will undoubtedly be the case . A major technique for the exploiters is to hide the needle in the haystack , however we and most Internet users would argue, this is not our problem. It is the problem for the host or server, if they are legitimate they will or should move heaven and earth to clean up their act for the benefit of the legitimate webmasters, and more importantly the . For the innocent webmasters, why are you still hosting your web site with these hosts and servers anyway?

In the final analysis this is about choice. Choice for the average PC user to reduce the threat of being exploited, the ISP (Internet Service Provider) to assist in 'prevention' for their users, the hosts, servers, and DNS registrars, to not just take an anonymous client and probably stolen credit card. Authorities such as ICANN are well aware of this increasing problem, perhaps this helps create the groundswell for them to act on behalf of the 99% of Internet users.

Useful Article Links:

Article Downloads - Top 25 csv, IP block lists

SecureWorks - Top Spam Botnets

ICANN - Advisory on Fast Flux Hosting and DNS

DNS Education - How Domain Servers Work

HostExploit - What? Why? Who?

HostExploit – ‘A call to arms’- Why another Internet security blog and more ‘black hole’ lists? - It's the HOSTS!

It has become increasingly apparent the malware, spam, phishing and other BadWare distributors are now engaged in automated domain generation, 100’s to 1,000’s per week, which is proving a serious difficulty for major domain / IP ‘blocklist’ and ‘blacklist’ providers to simply keep up .

Added to this we now have; iFrame attacks via web portals, several major international web hosts with 1,000’s of their innocent and money paying clients having hacked and infectious (to web surfers) web sites, DDos (distributed denial of service), polymorphic malware that many anti-virus / spyware / malware solutions are unable to detect, and millions of PC users being directed to rogue and fake web sites.

Finally we have the rise of the Botnets, anonymously managed fast and double-flux (ever changing IP addresses) control of 1,000’s of infected zombie PCs.

We now believe the general situation on the Internet calls for an alternative and added open source approach to deal with this head on, i.e. the web hosts and Internet carriers. Every one of the IP’s, web sites or domains are hosted or carried by someone, we feel it is time to break the taboo and name, list and expose the ones that host the malware that infects us all. This approach is not to replace existing methods, but we hope it will add to the security community’s and PC user’s array of possible tools to reduce the threat.


HostExploit – Who? This blog and associated list(s) is edited by Jart Armin and James McQuaid, however the research is provided by a wider volunteer group, some of whom would rather remain anonymous, due to their other professional Internet activities. All those involved are web professionals within; web hosting, server management, DNS (Domain Name System), Internet security, and IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems).


HostExploit – Who is this for? You, i.e. any PC user, webmaster, ISP (Internet Service Provider) or web host, who wants to reduce the threat of infection or exploitation. Where necessary or possible all topics and articles will contain added information to illuminate and educate.


HostExploit – What to expect?
• Bad Host Lists – these will be in several formats for users to apply for themselves or distribute freely. These lists will initially focus on the (b) and (c) categories (see below) can be used to black hole, block or just for general awareness - click here.

• Specific bad host exposures – On a regular basis there will be articles exposing a specific host and providing detailed and where possible quantification with a historical background.

• Bad Host categorization – host or AS (autonomous server) issue comes down to a certain level of semantics and initially crude differentiation – so we will commence with an ‘a b c’ method:

(a) Hosts / Servers / AS of 'infected sites' = - i.e. infected or hacked sites / domains which have bad exploit code, infected iFrame, SQL injections, XSS exploits, etc. to exploit visitors.

(b) Hosts / Servers / AS of 'user infector sites' = i.e. where the malware and rogues are located and more often than not, users are directed to from infections on sites within (a)

(c) Hosts / Servers / AS of 'user receptor sites' = The ultimately very bad = including the so called "the bullet proof servers" masked by the botnets to; receive, trade, pay affiliates, warez, etc. etc. - from (b); stolen IDs, credit cards, bank phishing info, for (a) to pay partners and affiliates to infect the web sites. Also for DDos Botnet C&C (command and control) actions.

HostExploit - To Inform and educate – Articles that attempt to help explain the processes and terminology involved.

HostExploit – Want to help or have your say? This is an open source ‘non-profit’ volunteer group and we welcome help, input or feedback. However for security reasons there is no allowance for onsite comments so email HostExploit (at) gmail.com.

It is likely input would be within the following:

• To keep informed or pass on the information? – sign up for a ‘Feedburner’ feed and then you will be informed about new articles. Feel free to pass on articles and the list(s), publish in your blog or magazine or newspaper, under a ‘Creative Commons License’, obviously it is courteous to show hostexploit.com as a reference.

• Have information we may have missed or a new exposure? – email us.

• Web Host / Server / AS, and feel any information or inclusion within the list(s) is in error? – Please email us and say where we are wrong, our objective is to reduce such a list and we will be delighted to explain the error or demonstrate you have cleaned up your act.