Blacklist entries ‘unfair and illegal’.
Dutch ISP
A2B Internet
has sued
The Spamhaus Project
, claiming the project unfairly blacklisted its IP range.
A2B
provides the upstream connection for a number of data centres. Recently,
Spamhaus
, which runs a number of widely used IP- and URL-based blacklists, asked the provider to block traffic of the
Cyberbunker
provider, claiming the latter had been engaged in spamming.
According to
A2B
, this accusation was based on a single SMS spam message and it refused to block anything but the IP address this message was sent from.
Spamhaus
then added all of
A2B
‘s IP addresses to its SBL blacklist. After about 24 hours,
A2B
gave in and blocked
Cyberbunker
‘s traffic, after which the blacklist entry was removed.
A2B
sees this as proof it had been extorted and that the listing was not based on the ISP being involved in spamming. It claims
Spamhaus
‘s actions were unfair and illegal.
When contacted by a Dutch IT news website,
Spamhaus
founder Steve Linford declined to comment on the specific case. He did, however, say that
Spamhaus
has a policy of blocking ISPs that facilitate spammers. To call this extortion, Linford continued, is the same as being refused entry to a restaurant for not conforming to its dress code, and then claiming you are being extorted.
Spamhaus
has a history of lawsuits filed against it, usually by those it directly accused of (and more often than not engaged in) spamming. Famously, when sued by mass-mailer
e360
,
Spamhaus
was initially sentenced to pay $11m in damages. This amount was later reduced to a mere three dollars.
More (in Dutch) at IT website
Webwereld
here
. The FAQs for
Spamhaus
‘s SBL blacklist can be found
here
.
Update
:
Spamhaus
has now commented on the case in a
blog post
, explaining how
Cyberbunker
(also known as
CB3ROB
) has been involved in hosting malware and phishing sites. Ironically, this very week
Spamhaus
has been working with the Dutch hi-tech crime unit to investigate the criminal activity hosted by
Cyberbunker
and routed by
A2B
.
Posted on 13 October 2011 by
Virus Bulletin
Leave a Reply