"If you are the perpetrator of any such activities, consider this
your first and final warning. There will be no further warnings
before action is taken, the least of which is the suspension of your
account. If you think you cannot be traced, think again," said the
statement issued yesterday to its 350,000 subscribers by the Customer
Support Manager, Internet Services for the ISP.
TMnet said it was forced to take "drastic measures" against
perpetrators of the abuse to protect the "innocent" users.
"If you know anyone who performs such activities, please advise them
before they get into real trouble. If you are parents, please take
care to see what your children may be doing on the Internet," said
the statement.
The statement said TMnet is sharing information with the other local
ISP Jaring and local abuse watchdog MyCERT which may result in
"blacklisting of habitual offenders."
"Serious crimes have been reported to the police and these crimes are
punishable by law which may include fines and jail terms," it stated
ominously.
The statement came on the heels of a permanent ban of all TMnet users
from accessing any server on the popular global Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) network, the Undernet, on Sunday.
The Undernet.org administrators unanimously voted in favour of the
ban after repeated complaints of abuse were not adequately dealt
with, and the "lack of communication or cooperation" on the part of
the ISP.
"As a relatively small community in the Internet, Malaysians generate
some of the worst levels of abuse in the world and this is something
we have to be ashamed of," continued the TMnet statement, echoing an
earlier description by the Undernet.org on the abuse that led to
the ban.
The statement said abuse of the Undernet chat services was just one
aspect of the type of abuse of the Internet by Malaysians. Other
abuses cited include spamming, forwarding chain letters, hacking,
cracking, Back Orifice and Netbus scanning, credit card fraud,
propagating viruses, worms and trojan horses, mail bombing, "nuking"
and launching of denial of service attacks.
Back Orifice and Netbus allow hackers to take control of users'
machines while they are online while nuking is a technique to force
another user's system to crash.
"The level of abuse is so great that the ISPs cannot cope with
tracking down and warning errant users. It also takes up time and
resources which could be used to improve our services to you, our
customers," said the TMnet statement.
Jaring served a similar warning to its 200,000 subscribers last week
that it would disconnect the "small proportion" of users found to be
abusing their accounts without notice.
It stated it would also scan users to identify misconfigured or
misused equipment that could be used by unauthorized users to launch
the abuse.
A North American abuse coordinator for the Undernet.org, known as
Angel Moss, was in favor of the scanning, despite misgivings of some
members of the local Internet community.
"Any ISP that takes proactive, responsible measures to ensure the
proper use and management of their resources should be commended for
their efforts," said Moss.
Moss described the scanning has a "harmless, non-invasive management"
tool.
"Many ISPs around the globe are tired of their bandwidth being
hijacked and abused by the anonymous access that modem-sharing and
proxy server software like Wingate and Socks 5 allows to others,"
said Moss.
Moss also conjectured that abusers could be connecting to and using
insecure servers at cybercafes without its owners knowing.
"People who access these insecure proxy servers are not doing it with
good intentions. They are doing it to hide their real identity and
use the resources of the network the proxy is connected to. They are
the worse form of sneak thieves, who have to hide and steal to play
their games," said Moss.
Moss said securing these servers would help free up resources and
bandwidth for the ISPs' paying customers.
Links:
The TMnet Warning.
(Published in CNET Asia, Sept 08,1999)