Sir or Madam,

jrfoleyjr@comcast.net wrote:

After some searching, it appears that RIPE has no actual abuse policy but that everything is still hanging in limbo.

I was looking for an address to report hacker activity to and it appears that you are a) not in the business b) not equipped to handle it c) barely qualified to assign blocks of IP addresses so that the addressee can self-police, unless they are hacker/spammer organizations. In which case the rest of the worlds choice is to ban RIPE assigned addresses. Hopefully RIPE will mature soon!

If in fact you DO have a group assigned for the purpose of investigating hackers, please make it available on you web page.
 

You should have already received the information off-list, but I think it is probably worth it to explain to the rest of the Database Working Group subscribers how we (the RIPE NCC) handle such complaints.

Generally, we hope that people see the link that says "Spam and Hacking Help" on the www.ripe.net web page:

http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/abuse/index.html

Despite our best efforts to keep it simple, the front page has a lot of information, and this link can easily get overlooked. Also, a lot of abuse reports come to RIPE NCC by people who find RIPE NCC e-mail addresses in the database or other places that do not have enough information about finding the best e-mail address to contact.

Whenever anyone working at the RIPE NCC gets an abuse complaint now, we send the following e-mail:

Dear Sir/Madam,
                                                                               
You have sent a complaint regarding some type of abuse (i.e. hacking,
spam).
                                                                               
The RIPE NCC allocates address space to ISPs and other organisations.
These organisations are responsible for the activities originating
from the address space allocated to them. Since the RIPE NCC is NOT
the organisation using or responsible for activities originating from
the address space, any concerns or responses should be directed to
them.
                                                                               
We would like to help you find the appropriate party responsible for
the address space and therefore have created the following web page:
                                                                               
http://www.ripe.net/abuse.html
                                                                               
Please also see our FAQ for further information:
                                                                               
http://www.ripe.net/info/faq/abuse/index.html
                                                                               
If you still believe that the abuse originates from the RIPE NCC's
network please send your complaint within seven days to
                                                                               
abuse+51574a0be8765eecf9dd5ef5e75bb20005fd1644@ripe.net
                                                                               
                                                                               
Kind Regards,
                                                                               
RIPE NCC
www.ripe.net

The strange e-mail address there is a temporary address that gets forwarded to a human. The idea here is that if there is actually abuse that we can do something about, then people will bypass the automated responder and get a human. While do try to follow best practices regarding security, it is possible that one of our computers gets compromised and used for bad things! Also sometimes people really, really think that the RIPE NCC should be responsible for abuse originating in the RIPE region, and want to communicate with a human about it.

We do not have any plans to set up a group to investigate hackers, and it would probably be something for the RIPE NCC Services Working Group to recommend, rather than the Database Working Group. I do not think it is likely that the RIPE community will support such a service, as there are several organisations in the RIPE region that are already dedicated to this activity. But if you think it is worth doing, please have a look at the RIPE Policy Development pages:

http://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/

The RIPE community is actually very open and willing to discuss good ideas.

--
Shane Kerr
Software Engineering Department Manager
RIPE NCC