[routing-wg] [anti-abuse-wg] 2019-08 New Policy Proposal (RPKI ROAs for Unallocated and Unassigned RIPE NCC Address Space) to be discussed on Routing Working Group Mailing List

Regarding this general idea of having some authority make route
announcements for unallocated/unassigned blocks, Mr. Azimov is
quite clerly correct that Bad Actors could still promulgate more
specific announcements.  The solution is obvious.  All such preemptive
announcements could be deaggregated down to the /24 level.  This
would not be dramatically different from what innumerable foolish
providers are already doing on a fairly routine basis, and the net
effects would surely make the equipment vendors almost as happy as
IPV6.

An alternative that seems to have gotten rather less attention would
be to simply work to try to get all of the toxic sludge that is
currently present in various IRRs (not including RIPE anymore, thank
goodness) cleaned up.  Until such time as more than 50% of the net
is actively using and relying on RPKI, this is the low hanging fruit
with regards to routing security.

The most glaring offender is RADB.

Today, even nearly a month after the ``explosive'' article in the
South African publication mybroadband.co.za regarding the activities
of a corrupt insider in Afrinic, and even after reports relative to
that have allegedly been filed with relevant law enforcement bodies,
I daresay that there are still route objects in RADB for a fair amount
of the illictly purloined IPv4 space.  But that is not even nearly the
end of the rot that is present there.  Additionally, I have seen
instances of route objects in RADB involving IPv4 blocks that were
formally and fully reclaimed by the relevant RIRs years ago, and
in a similar vein, RADB also contains route objects for ASNs that
were likewise reclaimed by their respective RIRs years ago.  I have
written to the RADB maintainers about some of these issues in the past.
My emails were ignored and I was not even given the courtest of a reply
to inform me that my messages were being ignored.  In short, it appears
from where I sit that RADB is being run on autopilot.  It is certainly
not being "maintained" in any sense of the word that I am familiar with.

If RADB were a toxic waste dump, it would be among those that we here
in the U.S. refer to as a "Superfund site".

I feel sure that other IRRs have some or all of the same issues.  RADB
stands out however due to its continued widespread use.

I say again that the glaring issues relating to the serious lack of
competent maintenance of IRRs generally is the low hanging fruit of
routing security.  As such, my hope is that others will join me in
at least trying to get the attention of RADB management focused on a
long-overdue and badly-needed competent cleanup effort.


Regards,
rfg