Top
Best
New

Posted by todsacerdoti 2 days ago

Bulletproof host Stark Industries evades EU sanctions(krebsonsecurity.com)
169 points | 55 comments
iammrpayments 2 days ago|
It’s a little bit Ironic that they use the name of an American super hero
DFHippie 2 days ago|
[flagged]
nickff 2 days ago||
It is my understanding that Marvel Studios' Tony Stark was modeled after him, rather than the other way around. Additionally, he had a cameo in one of the Iron Man movies.
simsla 2 days ago|||
Elon was three years old when the first Iron Man comic book came out.

EDIT: and the movies are pretty faithful to the comic books.

dotnet00 2 days ago||
The movie personality of Tony Stark was supposedly inspired by Musk's persona (at least from before he began spending most of his time in a futile attempt to woo Trump)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/oct/28/robert-downey-j...

"In 2022, Iron Man screenwriter Mark Fergus confirmed that Musk had partly inspired the screen version of the Marvel hero, as both men share tech prowess, arrogance and a short fuse. He told New York magazine that Stark was as if “Musk took the brilliance of [Steve] Jobs with the showmanship of [Donald] Trump,” adding: “He was the only one who had the fun factor and the celebrity vibe and actual business substance.”"

Edit: I'm not quite sure why Musk was brought up unprompted though, made it seem like he has something to do with this company, but it doesn't seem like that's the case?

kingkongjaffa 2 days ago||
This is pretty revisionist. In 2008 when the first Iron Man movie came out, Trump wasn’t on anyone’s radar let alone used as inspiration for anything.
Talanes 2 days ago|||
The 1993 movie Super Mario Bros. features both a major and minor antagonist clearly modeled after Donald Trump. He was a well known, highly referenced figure for DECADES before he entered politics. Where are you getting this idea that nobody in 2008 could have been thinking about Donald Trump?

He was literally in the middle of his 13-year run on Network tv. If he hadn't won the presidency, that would be talked about as the apex of his time as a public figure.

pezezin 2 days ago||
Isn't the alternate timeline version of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future 2 modeled after Donald Trump? That movie was released in 1989...
yahoozoo 2 days ago||
The screenwriter said some time _after_ 2016 with never previously noting the connection so take that as you will.
Philpax 2 days ago||||
Donald Trump has been a public figure for much longer than just the last ten years. By 2008, the Apprentice had already been running for four years. He ran for president in 2000. The portrayal of Biff Tannen in Back to the Future 2 (1989) was partially based on his public persona at the time.
dotnet00 2 days ago|||
The Trump bit may be revisionist (I admittedly hadn't heard of that comparison before), but the Musk bit goes pretty far back, here's a 2011 article about it: https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/08/robert-down...

And, having been a kid at the time, I remember excitedly talking with friends about how Elon Musk was the real life Tony Stark. We were young enough to be insulated from his controveries, and to not truly appreciate how impossible the Iron Man suit was.

yareally 1 day ago||||
I feel Tony Stark is more like Howard Hughes than Elon. His dad even looks a bit like him in the movies

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Hughes

nickff 1 day ago||
The comic book Tony Stark was definitely modeled on Hughes, but it seems like the (Marvel Studios) movie Stark was at least partially based on Musk.
tomjakubowski 2 days ago|||
His cameo in IM2 was part of the deal he made to let the producers use a SpaceX facility.
dabeeeenster 2 days ago||
WTH is a “bulletproof host”? Been working in the industry for 30 years and never once heard it?
david_shaw 2 days ago||
> WTH is a “bulletproof host”?

A "bulletproof" host or provider is the colloquial term for a business that will not reveal your identity, payment information, provide LEO access, respond to subpoenas, etc.

It's generally used by cyber-criminals as a "safe" vendor, though some privacy-minded individuals like this type of provider as well.

zamadatix 2 days ago|||
> provide LEO access

Those poor astronauts! ("Law Enforcement Officer", for anyone else not in the know).

tharkun__ 2 days ago||
Especially helpful hint coz the other thread's talking about Elon </SCNR>
cptnapalm 2 days ago|||
My mind first jump to an old video of somebody shooting a Sun Microsystems machine and the bullets did not in fact penetrate the steel.
rrauenza 2 days ago||
Are you thinking of HP or did they both do it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnjb1WVkhmU

cptnapalm 2 days ago||
I forgot about the HP one! I distinctly remember there was a Sun too; it was like a backyard shoot.
willvarfar 1 day ago||
There was an awesome viral video of someone offloading their frustration and a full mag on an HP printer. Now I can't find the original because it started a trend of copiers.
gnabgib 2 days ago|||
Ars covered it in 2013, it's common in security (Risky Business, OSInt, Krebs) https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/01/how-t...
nickstinemates 2 days ago|||
It says so in the article. Isp's who ignore authorities and allow anything to happen on their networks.
Rotdhizon 2 days ago|||
Imagine a rack of servers in some countries where global and even that country's law can't really touch them. "cyber gangs" and the like will use those servers as hosting for their malware and activities.
IlikeKitties 2 days ago||
> even that country's law can't really touch them.

Well, that countries law enforcement could always cut off those servers. It's usually either due to corruption or in case of russia political intent that these servers are kept online.

dabeeeenster 2 days ago|||
Thanks for the replies. Should have RTFA I guess
lucb1e 2 days ago||
> Been working in the industry for 30 years and never once heard it?

obligatory: https://xkcd.com/1053/ Happy ten thousand day!

Others already answered but while I'm chiming in anyway, I'm not in the hosting industry but IT security (for like ten years, say) and for me it's a very normal term. Maybe precisely because of that niche though; many of us are paranoid

hrdwdmrbl 2 days ago||
Sometimes it feels like the internet is still the wild west.

The EU tries to rope off a single building with velvet ropes, a doorman, ID verification, facial scans, and cookie banners, while next door it's an illegal rave in an abandoned supermarket.

devjab 2 days ago||
I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation. What websites should do is that they should assume you reject any tracking as their default, and then they can offer a site setting that you have to seek out, where you can agree to be tracked. What they are sort of allowed to do, is that they can prompt you with a banner, but it has to be a single no-click without requiring you to read much, but that is still not compliance. Anything more annoying is a legal violation.

The real issue is that there aren't a whole lot of consequences when it comes to tracking data. It's a legal violation, sure, but it's not a criminal violation. So it would be up to you to pursue it. In many countries you can't even file a civil lawsuit, but rather, you have to go through your national data protection agency. Which in reality likely means your complaint will be auto-rejected after five years because they need to clean up the queue.

As far as the malicious disobedience goes... well... it's probably because "all the other website do it", but you might as well just give people the option to go to a setting to turn it off. It's not like that would be any less of a legal violation than the banner.

IanCal 2 days ago|||
Sort of aside but it’s wild to me that people talk of ab testing all kinds of minor things and yet so many shops immediately cover up the item I’m viewing with a huge banner/full page annoyance about cookies.
willvarfar 1 day ago|||
The other day I accidentally double-clicked on the the dismiss of a popup and the second click went through to the page underneath and I added an item to cart.

Don't know if it was intentionally positioned like that but I was ready to imagine it was.

zamadatix 2 days ago||||
The two aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, it's very possible the same places found the tracking data is worth the annoyance.
erulabs 2 days ago||||
If the majority of users use the system wrong, it's the system that's wrong, not the users.
jdlshore 2 days ago||
That rubric only applies when the users aren’t actively and maliciously sabotaging the system, which privacy-subverting websites absolutely are. (And everyone else is cargo-cutting their behavior.)
chatmasta 2 days ago|||
To be fair, I’m sabotaging it from the other side with my ad-blocker.
kevin_thibedeau 2 days ago||
Defending yourself from abuse is not an excuse for others to engage in abuse. I have no issue with passive 90's-style ads. I don't need to block them. I use my abuse-blocker to handle more concerning problems.
WesolyKubeczek 2 days ago|||
Note that the most annoying consent banners come from advertising conglomerates (IAB comes to mind). Well who would think they wouldn’t sabotage anything?
petcat 2 days ago|||
> I think blaming the EU for cookie banners is wrong. Those banners are malicious disobedience, and, for the most part a legal violation.

The EU's own government websites are littered with the obnoxious cookie banners [1].

It's an unbelievably thoughtless and misguided law that has unfortunately ruined the internet. I think a lot of people rightfully blame the EU and they're terrible lawmaking for this nonsense.

https://european-union.europa.eu

zamadatix 2 days ago||
I don't seem to get them from outside the EU (even with my adblocker disabled), so a law saying they need an annoying banners I agree to before they go for it might actually be a step up.
rubiquity 2 days ago|||
If anything the internet has become more of the wild west and will continue to do so as the internet is incredibly useful for state actors.
giveita 2 days ago|||
The physical world is like that too!
TacticalCoder 2 days ago||
[dead]
yieldcrv 2 days ago||
this is more common and easier than people think, and I think this conflict was necessary to exposure the hubris behind global superpowers

they think they're omnipotent but really don't control the world, rendering economic sanctions and service blacklisting to be null and moot

trhway 2 days ago||
Sanctions?! What sanctions? They don't even hide, right in the heart of Western Europe:

https://www.swedbank-aktiellt.se/telegram/WOzsdcJG

"AMSTERDAM, April 10, 2025

MIRhosting, a leading provider of enterprise-grade colocation and IT infrastructure services in Europe, proudly announces the launch of two dedicated, fully equipped data rooms at its newest location within the NorthC data center in Nieuwegein. This strategic expansion strengthens MIRhosting's colocation capabilities, directly addressing the growing demand for reliable and scalable colocation solutions in the greater Amsterdam region...."

pessimizer 2 days ago|
[flagged]
galaxy_gas 2 days ago||
Ignoring the narrative portion , I routinely block the PQ IP spaces which change frequently in my services. They are mass brute force and exploit attempt-abuse report is ignored, spam/exploit scan, botnet CNC

They are also UpStream of several other provider. For example https://bgp.he.net/AS215540#_prefixes

I have not seen legitimate single request from ANY ip in this. Only spam bot and brute.

ACCount37 2 days ago||
And you never would - if you keep slapping IP bans left and right.

Blanket IP bans should have died back in 00s, where they belong. Instead, we still get wannabe webmasters applying them willy-nilly - with gatekeepers like Cloudflare enabling them.

dafelst 2 days ago|||
From TFA

> Materializing just two weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Stark Industries Solutions became a frequent source of massive DDoS attacks, Russian-language proxy and VPN services, malware tied to Russia-backed hacking groups, and fake news.

Nihilartikel 2 days ago|||
I did a pro bono analysis of a ddos against a dolphin protection non profit, probably a lashing out from a butthurt fishing concern. A significant amount of traffic in that attack originated from the stark asn. Interesting to see them here.
preisschild 2 days ago|||
This is not "censorship". These are Russian state-sponsored influence operations against countries it might want to invade (hybrid warfare)
trhway 2 days ago||
> censorship of Russians

why not censor Russians? They had as of now already censored forever about a million of Ukranians and have shown all the intentions to do it more and more.

And Russia doesn't allow foreign propaganda inside Russia (it is a felony there), so it is absolutely normal to block Russian propaganda inside the foreign countries (and notice that nobody spreading Russian propaganda are put in jail for that in foreign countries though that would be only fair) .

tryauuum 2 days ago||
Because the tools created for censorship for the good cause are too dangerous to exist

Governments quickly realize that they cannot effectively block websites in foreign jurisdictions. The only way to achieve this is to tell local ISPs which subnets to block, and fine them if they disobey. When this automation is in place, the government can block any website in a matter of hours, no matter where it is located

eptcyka 2 days ago|||
The tools exist as is, that cat has been out of the bag for quite a while.
tryauuum 2 days ago||
Not in my country. The ISP just blocks a domain name on the ISP-provided DNS server, which is a joke in the world of dns-over-https
trhway 2 days ago||||
>Because the tools created for censorship for the good cause are too dangerous to exist ....the government can block any website in a matter of hours

yet the tools of war do exist. Even though the government can kill anybody in a matter of minutes.

And we do already have tools to block spam, and there is no difference between spam and Russian propaganda.

tryauuum 1 day ago||
Comparing it to the physical thing is not fair. Murder is slow, and for mass murder at least there are people who will have to agree and do it. Compare it to automatically blocking a website after a button is pressed

And murder is transparent, you cannot murder many people without a public reaction. With the internet though... They can block thousands of IPS and no one will know. And you cannot access the database of the blocked resources because, who are you, a pedophile?

I have a feeling I cannot explain how painful it is to live in a country destroying the internet. I wanted to leave the Russia even before the war because of that. Now I am extremely allergic to any government's censorship attempts

awesome_dude 2 days ago|||
Have you heard of the great firewall of China at all?