I have a script that logs IPs for any traffic coming in to my servers on ports that don't accept traffic. I then block those IPs from accessing ports behind which there are services.
If they're checking my locked doors, I don't want them coming in my unlocked doors.
This might be a good idea, but consider banning them for, say, a couple hours at a time. It’s easy to rotate IP, especially if you’re using a residential proxy service, and there’s a good chance you’ll end up blocking real users using the same ISP.
And yet you regularly promote you own commercial product using submarine adverts on HN. Hmm... I can think of few other behaviours that HN commenters like less.
That’s part of our value proposition. It’s same as when you go to a bank and ask where the yield comes for your account or asking OpenAI where they get data to train their models.
> or asking OpenAI where they get data to train their models
Yes I know it comes from pirating/torrenting/scrapping. Are you saying you acknowledge your IPs come from malware, and that is OK because OpenAI is shady too?
For the context, I have the right not to tell you anything about how we operate our business but we're not shady, we don't take any action without user consent. The other thing is that we don't use "source" keyword in our business context. I think when you use that essentially you inherently accept some part of your business is shady as hell. Instead, we use "providers". That's a lot better.
No, but you weren’t upfront about it either. I’ve suspected it looked like your own project but checked your comments in the profile and didn’t see any other, so I didn’t dig any deeper.
> I’m not here to promote anything just wanted to share a valid use case in the right context.
There’s a small difference: if one of your users did this it would be totally fair, but when a founder does this I think it’s a polite thing to disclose it. That’s what I’ve been doing when talking about my own project on HN [1], and I think in most cases other legit founders just say that upfront, too. I’m not sure if that breaks any rules, but it feels juuuuust a bit shady not to :-)
Yeah I also have to fight the URL parameters on Algolia from time to time, the JS front-end seems to have some syncing bugs
Makes me think I should probably have reported it, even if I found a quick-for-me workaround. Looking at the repo, though, it was discontinued several months ago. https://github.com/algolia/hn-search Wonder how much longer it'll be online for
Actually should have clarified, I meant submissions not general posts. I just searched their profile's submissions and found seven mentioning proxybase. I actually didn't check their comments.
To me, that is even worse that comments. That violates my internal rule about submarine adverts. At least they can be honest about it and add their business to their profile, and mention it when they submit.
I like the API-centric nature of it. $10/GB seems a bit steep though, especially compared to Mullvad’s 5 €/mo.
Search for “mobile proxy” – those are usually cheap-ish monthly subscriptions, with unlimited traffic, and often an API to rotate the IP programmatically if you need it. No KYC, but you usually do have to sign up with an email.
yes, it's a bit more expensive because it's for different use cases. You can't use VPNs or Mullvad for anything mission critical. Just try to log in to your bank in US, it will increase your risk score on their end because VPNs by nature are very easy to detect whereas "residential proxies" much harder.
> You can't use VPNs or Mullvad for anything mission critical. Just try to log in to your bank in US, it will increase your risk score on their end because VPNs by nature is very easy to detect whereas "residential proxies" much harder.
Naturally! I’m just saying there’s residential proxy providers that are a LOT cheaper than that.
(IIRC, you can usually reply to fresh comments if you click on the “n minutes ago” – the reply link should be visible there even if it isn’t shown in the main comments tree)
I think when it comes to privacy or XMR, money is not really that important. Just give me a few names that support XMR payments + no KYC and providing mostly non-flagged residential IPs that you can use them for mission critical stuff.
That’s a good question! I haven’t been in this scene for a long long time now, so can’t say for sure.
I’ve been implementing an Instagram liker service back in... 2018 was it? So a stable pool of non-flagged residential proxies was important here, and it was my client who introduced me to the concept of “mobile proxies”. Basically, they use regular 3G/4G/5G modems with regular SIM cards, and expose that as a SOCKS proxy. You get a normal-looking IP from a pool of mobile operator’s IPs. Since mobile devices reconnect all the time (and are behind a CGNAT mostly nowadays), you can’t really flag an IP like that – and if it is flagged, you can get a fresh one in a moment.
I’m not using this mostly because I’m too lazy to research. Here’s a random one I found (so not an endorsement!) which is $1/GB, seems to only require email to sign up, and takes crypto (including XMR): https://floppydata.com/
There are a lot of legit scanners that look for problems to proactively warn the owner, so the mere presence of a packet on a port you aren't advertising somewhere is maybe a bit overkill, but if you think this is abuse: have you considered also reporting the abuse to the originating ISP? Otherwise they can never take action against that subscriber and the blocked IPs will just impact people that come after. ISPs that work with you and terminate subscribers that abuse their service should maybe not be blocked for more than a typical IP lease duration
> There are a lot of legit scanners that look for problems to proactively warn the owner
In my experience, most of the scanner firms seem to be creating their own maps of as much of the internet as they can get their grubby hands on, and then sell API access to their database of all services running on all the open ports on all the IP addresses they've probed and scanned and scraped.
Firstly, I don't want my shit listed in these databases. Secondly, the traffic is probably negligible, but it's still coming down my pipes (tubes) without an invitation, and I don't like that, plus they then profit off this uninvited behaviour. It rubs me the wrong way.
Finally, I highly doubt that (m)any of these services are doing it for altruistic purposes. They're doing it for reasons of profit, and then downstream of this is likely access by various intelligence agencies to this data.
I just don't think they have a right to this data.
> but if you think this is abuse: have you considered also reporting the abuse to the originating ISP?
That's a good point, and if I can automate that, then I will, but I don't consider it a priority. Finding the party ultimately responsible for an IP address isn't a particularly simple process.
It should be automateable, yes. Different RIRs (regional internet registries), which all operate their own WHOIS databases, might handle this differently but generally you should be able to get an abuse contact in an automated fashion for exactly this purpose
> most of the scanner firms seem to be creating their own maps of as much of the internet as they can get their grubby hands on, and then sell API access to their database
Yeah, sure, a lot of scanners are run by black or gray hats. Just saying that all options are on the table and blocking (or even reporting) e.g. the non-profit .nl operator organization for scanning tcp:443 on all the A/AAAA records of .nl domains is going to do much good
Closed ports are not "locked doors", and open ports are not "unlocked doors"
That is a binary thought process with a lot of assumptions. You might introduce even more attack surface in pursuit of this "security" measure by installing additional software like fail2ban, for example. Close your ports, maybe assign a non-standard port to the popular ones (like SSH) to reduce log spam, and patch your server often. Anything more complicated than that is not worth it, IMO.
If they're checking my locked doors, I don't want them coming in my unlocked doors.