Can't argue that it's fraudulent, but if those addresses truly are "dark" and it's not possible to contact the owners, maybe it's not so bad that they're doing this?
So "crims" (if they're criminals why isn't it a simple case of prosecuting them and confiscating their ill-gotten gains?) are making otherwise unusable IPv4s usable? That seems to be the bottom line to this story.
How exactly does one buy IP addresses? Do you have to run your own BGP instance and peer with others? Could I, for personal use by a /22 and control my own network? How much does that cost to do?
First you need to get a ASN. Not hard these days with 4 byte AS support. NRC and yearly fees for this.
Next you need to either get a direct allocation from a RIR (RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, etc) or buy/transfer IP's from another party. Depending on the IP's history, it may or may not be subject to transfer regulations (showing a need for it).
Once you've got an AS and IP's, you can advertise them out multiple ISP's with BGP. If you've only got a single provider, you can have them announce it for you and statically route it to your side of the interface.
Because they're falsely claiming to be the original registrant where invalid contact details exist in order to take over control of address blocks so they can re-sell them. (At least that's my interpretation of what appears to be going on based on text later in the article.)
Since everyone is objecting to the word "criminals" (and indeed the article is strangely all "criminals criminals criminals") we've taken that out of the title above.
24 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 29.6 ms ] threadNot that a /22 is huge but it beats dealing with sketchy people.
Next you need to either get a direct allocation from a RIR (RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, etc) or buy/transfer IP's from another party. Depending on the IP's history, it may or may not be subject to transfer regulations (showing a need for it).
Once you've got an AS and IP's, you can advertise them out multiple ISP's with BGP. If you've only got a single provider, you can have them announce it for you and statically route it to your side of the interface.
"We are now allocating from our last /8 block of IPv4 address space.
This means that LIRs can request one final /22 IPv4 allocation (1,024 addresses) from the RIPE NCC."
It's part of RIPE's IPv4 depletion playbook. They're in the 'you can't get anything larger than a /22, but everyone gets one last /22' phase.
[0] https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/ipv4/request-an-ipv...
https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-622#51
Anyway, I think I started all of this with a semantic quibble.
Edit: I am an idiot
*Edit: Auto-correct Correction
lol @ "criminals"