4 ms·

one more thing... presumably those other 15 IPs are MSPs similar to Netsentia. maybe Phineas Phisher better target those IPs to breach and leak them too. now

one more thing... presumably those other 15 IPs are MSPs similar to Netsentia. maybe Phineas Phisher better target those IPs to breach and leak them too. now that i think of it, maybe every IP address appearing in any Snowden leak should be probed to see if it still leads to interesting goodies.

rshnotsecure 6y ago
The NSA was something like 50 miles away from where this data was being hosted. It could have all been hosted in the much better / actually CJIS compliant Azure South at 5150 Rogers Road. That some random hosting company Netsential, not even a Microsoft Partner was chosen, makes both me and apparently the NSA suspicious. More than likely DataFoundry is a front company. DataFoundry, which definitely is a real company, was ultimately hosting the Nestential sites. Their founders are former Peace Corps [1] recruits from the 1970's. They look like nice people but definitely not engineering experts. Also everyone at the company has been in place for nearly its entire existence. That is a tell-tale sign of fraud, a tech company should have massive movement within its executive ranks during these last two decade boom years. Also no one I know has done business with them, and even their customer list seems pretty thin when you realized almost all of them have the same one or two Private Equity owners... [1] - https://www.datafoundry.com/blog/meet-founders-ron-carolyn-yokubaitis https://www.datafoundry.com/blog/meet-founders-ron-carolyn-y...
- adanto6840 6y ago
  While far less interesting, I can't help but notice this quote from your source: "In addition to Texas.Net and Data Foundry, Ron and Carolyn established a Usenet company, Giganews, and an Internet security solutions company, Golden Frog, which provides one of the world’s leading VPN services, VyprVpn." How extremely curious -- they are & have been a major seller of Usenet access & "privacy"/VPN services for the past few decades; hmm.
  - netsentialuser 6y ago
    None of this is really that surprising. DataFoundry is a real company and pretty typical for the industry, I don't see any particular reason to suspect that they're a front. They're on the small side for the datacenter/colo sector but similar to something like PheonixNAP. While I can't say I know any of their customers personally I have gotten quotes from them in the past which were competitive but not quite the best available. No particular technical expertise is involved in running these sorts of companies, those staff are hired. The top-level executive management is more reminiscent of commercial real estate than anything technical---it's buying land, building buildings, and putting tenants in them. That the owners of the company have been involved in Usenet and VPN services is quite unsurprising---these are both industries that are technically simple, easy to get into, and can show a pretty quick profit. The up-front capital involved to get into them is having rack space and connectivity... things that, as owners of a colo outfit, they already had on hand. VPN services also have a high degree of customer overlap and can share infrastructure with usenet, so there is a VERY high degree of overlap between usenet providers and VPN providers---to the extent that it's more suspicious if a Usenet provider doesn't share owners with a VPN provider.

rshnotsecure 6y ago

The NSA was something like 50 miles away from where this data was being hosted. It could have all been hosted in the much better / actually CJIS compliant Azure South at 5150 Rogers Road. That some random hosting company Netsential, not even a Microsoft Partner was chosen, makes both me and apparently the NSA suspicious. More than likely DataFoundry is a front company. DataFoundry, which definitely is a real company, was ultimately hosting the Nestential sites. Their founders are former Peace Corps [1] recruits from the 1970's. They look like nice people but definitely not engineering experts. Also everyone at the company has been in place for nearly its entire existence. That is a tell-tale sign of fraud, a tech company should have massive movement within its executive ranks during these last two decade boom years. Also no one I know has done business with them, and even their customer list seems pretty thin when you realized almost all of them have the same one or two Private Equity owners... [1] - https://www.datafoundry.com/blog/meet-founders-ron-carolyn-yokubaitis https://www.datafoundry.com/blog/meet-founders-ron-carolyn-y...

adanto6840 6y ago
While far less interesting, I can't help but notice this quote from your source: "In addition to Texas.Net and Data Foundry, Ron and Carolyn established a Usenet company, Giganews, and an Internet security solutions company, Golden Frog, which provides one of the world’s leading VPN services, VyprVpn." How extremely curious -- they are & have been a major seller of Usenet access & "privacy"/VPN services for the past few decades; hmm.
- netsentialuser 6y ago
  None of this is really that surprising. DataFoundry is a real company and pretty typical for the industry, I don't see any particular reason to suspect that they're a front. They're on the small side for the datacenter/colo sector but similar to something like PheonixNAP. While I can't say I know any of their customers personally I have gotten quotes from them in the past which were competitive but not quite the best available. No particular technical expertise is involved in running these sorts of companies, those staff are hired. The top-level executive management is more reminiscent of commercial real estate than anything technical---it's buying land, building buildings, and putting tenants in them. That the owners of the company have been involved in Usenet and VPN services is quite unsurprising---these are both industries that are technically simple, easy to get into, and can show a pretty quick profit. The up-front capital involved to get into them is having rack space and connectivity... things that, as owners of a colo outfit, they already had on hand. VPN services also have a high degree of customer overlap and can share infrastructure with usenet, so there is a VERY high degree of overlap between usenet providers and VPN providers---to the extent that it's more suspicious if a Usenet provider doesn't share owners with a VPN provider.