Bulletproof Server

[Casio Bauman]

Toclearly understand what bulletproof hosting is, we should first take a step back and talk about regular hosting. A regular web hosting service is a company that operates a facility, usually what is referred to as a data

center, which contains massive amounts of servers. Everything on the Internet needs a place to live, and home is on these servers. Regular web hosting services provide space on a server, either owned or leased for use by customers. It also provides Internet connectivity so people can reach the websites and data hosted on those servers. Most of these services have strict policies regarding what can and cannot be stored on these servers.

Botnet Command and Control Centers A botnet command and control center is the master controller of a botnet. Botnets are computers infected by malware that allow the hacker to gain control in order to send out spam, malware, spyware and control other computers, turning them into another bot in the group.

Data Stashes They can also store stolen data that has been obtained via data breaches, corporate espionage, credit card databases and more. It is safer to store this type of data in one of these servers for a few reasons. These data havens usually have backup systems in place and are extremely secure. Additionally, in the event that the cybercriminal were apprehended, the authorities will not find the data stored on their personal equipment.

Editorial note: Our articles provide educational information for you. Our offerings may not cover or protect against every type of crime, fraud, or threat we write about. Our goal is to increase awareness about Cyber Safety. Please review complete Terms during enrollment or setup. Remember that no one can prevent all identity theft or cybercrime, and that LifeLock does not monitor all transactions at all businesses. The Norton and LifeLock brands are part of Gen Digital Inc.

Another obstacle is the use of modern tools like Tor and VPN technologies. Networks can use these kinds of tools to make themselves anonymous and less trackable over the Internet. This may also make it harder for security advocates to act against bulletproof hosts and their customers.

Some of the big cases reported in security bulletins and authoritative online sites show the power that bulletproof hosting sites can have, and the difficulty that the security community can has in identifying, containing and controlling them.

Krebs on Security also details some of the investigative work that was done in this case such as WHOIS registration record investigations and domain documentation, along with a kind of back-and-forth that shows that a spokesperson for the bulletproof network in question is not backing down, but suggests that his site has the backing of powerful government agencies.

Because cybercrime is unenforceable in so many cases, businesses have to address it within their own networks. That means taking more than just a perimeter approach to securing a network. It means a multi-segmented security campaign complete with vibrant endpoint protection and proactive threat monitoring.

Bulletproof hosting (BPH) is technical infrastructure service provided by an Internet hosting service that is resilient to complaints of illicit activities, which serves criminal actors as a basic building block for streamlining various cyberattacks.[1] BPH providers allow online gambling, illegal pornography, botnet command and control servers, spam, copyrighted materials, hate speech and misinformation, despite takedown court orders and law enforcement subpoenas, allowing such material in their acceptable use policies.[2][3][4]

BPH providers usually operate in jurisdictions which have lenient laws against such conduct. Most non-BPH service providers prohibit transferring materials over their network that would be in violation of their terms of service and the local laws of the incorporated jurisdiction, and oftentimes any abuse reports would result in takedowns to avoid their autonomous system's IP address block being blacklisted by other providers and by Spamhaus.[5]

BPH first became the subject of research in 2006 when security researchers from VeriSign revealed the Russian Business Network, an internet service provider that hosted a phishing group, was responsible for about $150 million in phishing-related scams. RBN also become known for identity thefts, child pornography, and botnets.[6][7][8] The following year, McColo, the web hosting provider responsible for more than 75% of global spam was shut down and de-peered by Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric after the public disclosure by then-Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs on his Security Fix blog on that newspaper.[9][10]

Since any abuse reports to the BPH will be disregarded, in most cases, the whole IP block ("netblock") assigned to the BPH's autonomous system will be blacklisted by other providers and third party spam filters. Additionally, BPH also have difficulty in finding network peering points for establishing Border Gateway Protocol sessions, since routing a BPH provider's network can affect the reputation of upstream autonomous systems and transit provider.[11] This makes it difficult for BPH services to provide stable network connectivity, and in extreme cases, they can be completely de-peered;[1] therefore BPH providers evade AS's reputation based fortification such as BGP Ranking and ASwatch through unconventional methodologies.[2]

Most BPH providers promise immunity against copyright infringement and court order takedown notices, notably Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Electronic Commerce Directive (ECD) and law enforcement subpoenas. They also allow users to operate phishing, scams (such as high-yield investment program), botnet masters and unlicensed online pharmacy websites. In these cases, the BPH providers (known as "offshore providers") operate in jurisdictions which do not have any extradition treaty or mutual legal assistance treaty (MLAT) signed with the five eye countries, particularly the United States.[15][16][17] However, most BPH providers have a zero-tolerance policy towards child pornography and terrorism, although a few allow cold storage of such material given forbidden open-accessibility via the public internet.[18]

Prevalent jurisdictions for incorporation and location of the data centers for BPH providers include Russia (being more permissive),[19] Ukraine, China, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Belize, Panama and the Seychelles.[20][21]

BPH services act as vital network infrastructure providers for activities such as cybercrime and online illicit economies,[22] and the well-established working model of the cybercrime economies surrounds upon tool development and skill-sharing among peers.[23] The development of exploits, such as zero-day vulnerabilities, are done by a very small community of highly-skilled actors, who encase them in convenient tools which are usually bought by low-skilled actors (known as script kiddies), who make use of BPH providers to carry out cyberattacks, usually targeting low-profile unpretentious network services and individuals.[24][25] According to a report produced by Carnegie Mellon University for the United States Department of Defense, low-profile amateur actors are also potent in causing harmful consequences, especially to small businesses, inexperienced internet users, and miniature servers.[26]

Criminal actors also run specialized computer programs on BPH providers knowns as port scanners which scan the entire IPv4 address space for open ports, services run on those open ports, and the version of their service daemons, searching for vulnerable versions for exploitation.[27] One such notable vulnerability scanned by the port scanners is Heartbleed, which affected millions of internet servers.[28] Furthermore, BPH clients also host click fraud, adware (such as DollarRevenue), and money laundering recruitment sites, which lure untried internet users into honey trapping and causing financial losses to the individuals while unrestrictedly keeping their illicit sites online, despite court orders and takedown attempts by law enforcement.[29]

The Spamhaus Project is an international nonprofit organization that monitors cyber threats and provides realtime blacklist reports (known as the "Badness Index") on malicious ASs, netblocks, and registrars that are involved in spam, phishing, or cybercrime activities. The Spamhaus team works closely with law enforcement agencies such as National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the data compiled by Spamhaus is used by the majority of the ISPs, email service providers, corporations, educational institutes, governments and uplink gateways of military networks.[30][31][32] Spamhaus publishes various data feeds that list netblocks of the criminal actors, and is designed for use by gateways, firewalls and routing equipments to filter out (or "nullroute") traffic originating from these netblocks:[11]

I normally try to avoid server/unix jargon on this blog but as you can tell I have become infatuated with Amazon's affordable storage solution, S3, as of late. We all know that it is important to keep recent backups of anything you value at all, so why not automate the process? Until I started tinkering with S3, my server backup process involved manually downloading and compressing the contents of my server and storing the compressed file on my hard drive. That usually took longer than I'd like so I wouldn't do it terribly often. The main benefit of backing up with S3 is that you take advantage to your server's high-speed connection and bypass the need to download files over your connection, as well as safely store files somewhere other than your own server.

For the most part, I took the advice of John Eberly in his automated S3 backups article. However, I did several things differently so I thought I would show what I did in an easy-to-follow format. The fruits of my labor come into play near the end with a simple shell script I wrote that compresses my entire server httpdocs directory (similar to public_html or www-type folders on other servers), does a mysql dump of my WordPress database and sends a tar.gz file of them to a backup bucket I have on my Amazon S3 account.

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