[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-1: Required Performance of Abuse Contact

Fri Aug 29 12:00:55 EDT 2025

Hi Shawn,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I think we all feel your frustration, at least I know that I do, both as a network provider and address holder who receives abuse complaints.

What I meant by disdain is the common practice of creating a mailbox rule to null route abuse complaints.

Now to address some of your reply, I will point out that changing agreements is not in the purview of this policy development list.

I guess POC validation is, and there is some work in that area.

But your request to change ARIN into a post-allocation policing agency needs to address the fundamental change that would require.

I don’t think it’s worth the cost.

Maybe the time would be better spent creating a Spamhaus-like private entity that publicized poor performers and recognized good ones, like AWS and Digital Ocean?

Finally, cloud providers are not equal to eyeball networks when it comes to their ability to police and shut down abuse offenders.

In many cases ISPs simply cannot connect the abuse report to a particular client without expensive logging of who was using what port at what time.

And blocking IP addresses in a CGNAT environment has collateral damage.

And then there is leasing, which can muddy the waters between abuse contacts and actual users. 

There is policy development that could be done in that region I believe.

Regards,
Mike

From: Shawn Bakhtiar <shashaness at gmail.com> 
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025 11:37 AM
To: Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com>
Cc: Scott Leibrand <scottleibrand at gmail.com>; pmcnary at cameron.net; ARIN-PPML at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-1: Required Performance of Abuse Contact

On Aug 29, 2025, at 7:58 AM, Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com <mailto:mike at iptrading.com> > wrote:

Hi Shawn,

Thank you for proposing this.

I am opposed to your policy as well.

You are not the first to notice the disdain many network operators feel for abuse requests. 

Why? Why the disdain?

Your arguments are good, but they fail against the wall of policing behavior.

I disagree, I believe they fall against the wall of good governance. 

ARIN can only police behavior from those who seek new resources. After that, ARIN  has no remit and no real power.

This needs to change, and flys in the face of the fact that I receive emails validating my POC status. I have sent emails to abuse POC and had them bounce. Your statement here basically says that those of us who do the right thing are punished by those who lack morals, and we should pay the price simply because ARIN refuses to take a stand. 

Those other organizations you mention, Spamhaus and the like, can operate as police but only insofar as other network operators regard them as authoritative.

ARIN has a registration services agreement that precludes revocation based on usage, effectively prohibiting ARIN from police work.

Change the agreement. You have no idea how many times Ive work with companies that give me the "this is the way it's always been done". Who made this agreement and how do we change it?

On the other hand, there are real police and real laws to address criminal behavior.

This isn't about criminal behavior. It's about good behavior vs bad. It's about setting standards for behavior, that if not followed will resolve of non participation. Though I suppose there is an argument to be made that they are costing my customers money.

Franky I don’t see this issue as restraining growth on the Internet.

Also I appreciate the kudos for AWS and Digital Ocean, but I am not sure dinging MS by name will be appreciated on the policy list.

Sorry, understood. I don't mean to be disparaging, but as you can imagine,  I am frustrated,

And in terms of actualizing your policy, you have to consider the costs of complying with takedown requests in an era of CGNAT  and short term DHCP leases.

I haven’t reviewed the discussion of the policy the last time it was broached, but I expect you will find some of these same arguments deployed.

Amazon does it, Digital Ocean does, DataPacket and many others are already practicing this policy, and argument of cost is moot, when the good guys are already doing it. I did it, and I'm a mom and pop operation. X does not get the square here, and any past arguments made on this point, are completly moot, given the effectiveness of the policy when practices by certain participents. 

As in my previous examples, those who do it, are effective and I have plenty of emails to prove it. Those who don't practice it have IP addresses that have been up for months now, with no remediation. 

Regards,

Mike Burns

PS It doesn’t matter who anybody IS on the list. It’s their arguments that matter, only.

I truly appreciate that, and I appreciate everyones engagement and understanding of the frustration I feel at something that seems so simple to do, yet such resistance and hand in the air approach, I don't get it.

From: ARIN-PPML <arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net <mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net> > On Behalf Of Shawn Bakhtiar
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025 10:32 AM
To: Scott Leibrand <scottleibrand at gmail.com <mailto:scottleibrand at gmail.com> >; pmcnary at cameron.net <mailto:pmcnary at cameron.net> 
Cc: ARIN-PPML at arin.net <mailto:ARIN-PPML at arin.net> 
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Policy Proposal 2003-1: Required Performance of Abuse Contact

Good morning Scott, Paul,

I'm not sure who Matt is, so far the only reasonable response I've received have been from Bill, who's right about doing my homework on the topic, and I truly appreciate his time and effort in leading me in a good direction.

You and Paul's suggestion, on the other hand, to simply block / report / sue, I find completely lacking, and frankly sad.

Your suggestions reeks of the those supposedly (edumicated) computer engineers I see managing servers, who simply throw CPU and memory at a problems instead of caring about or addressing the underlying root cause of an issue. Do either of you run OSSEC on servers you manage?

Your argument is tantamount to, I don't know what to do, so I'll just kick the can down to a policing organization who actually has very little skill or ability to meaningfully do anything about it. I've been there and done that, it's all but pointless. After 40 years of government and private work (long before the modern form of the internet was even a verb), I can assure you, your suggestion is lacking at best, and.... well... let's just leave it there, before I break the protocols of politeness :)

it is a shirking of responsibility for an organization that claims as part of it mission statement "...member-based organization that supports the operation and growth of the Internet."

I would argue that letting this behavior continue would neither be supportive nor promote growth (unless we're taking about the growth of Microsoft and others who abuse their size).

I'm not talking about a few vulnerability scans done by Universities et al, I'm taking about being hammered by 100s of popup-script-kiddie-servers made popular by products like Kali Linux, and the fact that some providers like AWS take it seriously while others like Microsoft completely ignore emails sent to registered abuse emails. 

It perplexes me to no bounds to see Amazon AWS (of all people), Digital Ocean, and many others, being a good netizen, and doing it (despite ARIN's inability to define a very common sense policy,  responding to abuse emails, assigning support tickets, and taking action on them, while Microsoft (we all know who they are) does not, and I'm beginning to see why. 

This I did not expect. 

You have quickly dismissed a real concern, without engaging in any meaningful debate. If what you say is remotely true, than why does Spanhuase exists? why does Abuse Radar exists? Why are their so many REAL COMMUNITY BASED organizations forming to dealing with an very serious issue, that law enforcement has no capabilities to deal with and apparently ARIN (the very governing body of IP addresses) doesn't care to do anything about, even though a very sound and reasonable policy was written, but never adopted, probably due to naysayers like yourself and Paul.

Lazy and bad. <-- period!

Curious though, you and Paul have attempted to dismissing me quite quickly and out of hand, but if I may, why not implement the policy, what do you think is going to happen? Why would it be bad to hold abuse POCs accountable for what their IP address is doing? What hardship do you think this will cause the community, other than you personally not wanting to be responsible for the IP addresses under your charge?

Again, I'm not asking ARIN to police it, I'm asking them to govern it. I'm not asking for people to be sent to jail or fined, I'm asking for the governing body to take action in stopping the behavior (preferable without the need for behemoth, slow, broadsword agencies like law enforcement having to get involved, they have a whole lot of issues they need to fix before they can even approach an issue like this).

I've been a POC for more than my fare share of ranges, I don't recall this ever being in issue, and I know I took my responsibility for the IP addresses under my charge very seriously. I would create a ticket, follow up with my end users, and if deemed inappropriate or against our policy, their privileges would be revoked. 

Telling me that ARIN isn't the police is like telling me the sky is not green. Obviously. 

However, it is the governing body, for the assignment of IP addresses. If the idea behind the abuse email was NOT to have it used to take down bad actors, then why even have it at all?

Why are some organization voluntarily doing what you and Paul find so offensive a policy, and why are you and Paul so much against it, other than a blanket statement the ARIN is not the police (again this obvious). However IT IS the governing body, and does bear responsibility for how the community behaves.

Honestly curious,

Shawn

On Aug 28, 2025, at 5:14 PM, Scott Leibrand <scottleibrand at gmail.com <mailto:scottleibrand at gmail.com> > wrote:

Just block them, as Matt suggested. Or sue them, if they're harming your business in some meaningful way that can't be trivially handled by blocking their abusive subnets. Or contact law enforcement if there's actual criminal trespass or some other law being broken.

ARIN is not set up to be the Internet police, and I would oppose any efforts to make it try to play that role. As Matt eloquently elucidated, any requirements ARIN could enforce would likely make things worse for everyone holding ARIN IP addresses for very little tangible social benefit.

-Scott

On Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 4:57 PM Shawn Bakhtiar <shashaness at gmail.com <mailto:shashaness at gmail.com> > wrote:

Thank You Bill!

I really appreciate the input, and these are all great suggestions. I will certainly do my homework and reach out again to the group with more specific questions on the topic. 

As I said  in my email to Alison, 

AWS (of all people), auto responds to any email sent to the abuse email on record for a given IP segment. It includes a ticket number, and without me having to follow up (usually a few days later) an email back often having remediated the issue, or in the rare instances where the they did not remedy the issue, explaining why the behavior is not abuse or a violation of their policies. 

Digital Ocean does the same thing (without a ticket number). So do several midsize providers. Hit and miss with anything smaller than a /24.

Microsoft (where the preponderance of abusive behaviors come from) and Google. Do nothing. Literally nothing. I have OSSEC notification logs in which a single IP address with a Microsoft abuse POC, continues to scan different customer's networks, looking for Wordpress vulnerabilities, and has done so for over a month, without any remediation. 

The aforementioned policy is a common sense one already being (voluntarily) done by a good number of the providers out there. I am very curious as to what objections anyone could have to it, and how we can address those concerns so we can put what seems like a very common sense policy into place. We need to bring accountability back to the internet.

Again, thank you for the guidance, I look forward to any and all questions, comments, and or concerns.

> On Aug 28, 2025, at 3:24 AM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us <mailto:bill at herrin.us> > wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 11:45 AM Shawn Bakhtiar <shashaness at gmail.com <mailto:shashaness at gmail.com> > wrote:
>> I would like to re-introduce the following Policy Proposal from 2003 to hold abuse POCs accountable.
>> https://www.arin.net/vault/participate/policy/drafts/2003/2003_1/
> 
>>> Changes to ARIN’s policies may be made via submission of a policy proposal
>>> via ARIN’s Policy Devcelopment Process - more details available here
>>> - https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/pdp/
> 
> Hi Shawn,
> 
> I note that the practical question of "how do I submit a policy
> proposal" is not answered in
> https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/pdp/, or if it is, it's buried
> so deeply I can't find it.
> 
> What you probably want is the policy proposal template, which you can
> find here: https://www.arin.net/participate/policy/pdp/appendix_b/
> 
> You can also discuss policy changes here on the mailing list without
> making a formal proposal. That would enable you to gather information
> which could inform a formal proposal.
> 
> I recommend you sift through the mailing list archives at
> https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-ppml/ and read the original
> discussions around proposal 2003-1. This can help you understand what
> defects in that proposal led to it failing to reach consensus.
> 
> Finally, I note that there have been other off and on discussions
> about the published POCs and their utility. It might be worth digging
> into them as well. Try a Google search such as, "site:lists.arin.net <http://lists.arin.net/> 
> abuse poc"
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Herrin
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> William Herrin
> bill at herrin.us <mailto:bill at herrin.us> 
> https://bill.herrin.us/

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