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Why Host in Kosovo?
- zoklet-enjoyer 3y agoPeople have been openly selling drugs on Instagram and Snapchat for years. This isn't really any different.
- dpedu 3y ago> We utilise legacy IP addresses that cannot be revoked by RIPE What does this mean? It sounds like ASN spoofing/squatting.
- schroeding 3y agoProbably addresses distributed by IANA directly before RIPE (and RIRs in general) existed[1]. I don't know if they actually cannot be revoked by RIPE (or ARIN or someone else), though. [1] https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/legacy-resources/legacy-internet-resources-faqs https://www.ripe.net/manage-ips-and-asns/legacy-resources/le...
- Mindwipe 3y agoIt's very hard to see how RIPE could not revoke them. They might not have much of a process, but that doesn't mean they couldn't invent one. And if the argument is that you could undertake legal action to get them not to do that well... given you've essentially just argued you are not subject to the law due to the status of Kosovo's government and you'd likely be defending actions that are illegal in any other state best of luck with that.
- throwawaaarrgh 3y agoIf this is legitimate, these people are idiots. If it's not legitimate it's a honeypot. Either way I'm sure stupid criminals will fall for it, so kudos
- al2o3cr 3y agoLOL reminds me of how a couple dummies get caught every year or so by RentAHitman.com
- wkat4242 3y agoReminds me of the Silk road owner who was totally scammed by a biker gang to pay for a hit the police think never happened.
- figassis 3y agoI mean, the amount of variables and risk one would have to be comfortable with to take their statements at face value and signup…you’d have to be some cartel. Ping ponging servers between semi-hostile borders? Talk about stressful availability.
- wodenokoto 3y agoTaiwan is also not officially recognized as a country, but that doesn’t stop the world from engaging in all sorts of diplomatic-like relationships.
- mshockwave 3y agoTaiwan also hosts one of the few GCP datacenters in (east) Asia
- marci 3y agoFor a bit more context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837273 (Man found guilty of child porn because he ran a Tor exit node)
- polemic 3y agoI've just spent a week in Kosovo for an international tech conference and it's pretty clear that the article is shit-posting. Kosovo might be small and somewhat 'wild west' but you'd be very silly to take any of that advice. Even if you believee the claims, the EU - especially Germany - is heavily involved in economic development of the country. Kosovo is very keen to improve their EU integration. So, you might be able to side-step Kosovar authorities, but gain the attention of the EU and you're not going to be protected by incompetance or bribery of local law enforcement. As an aside - it's a great place to visit. Friendly, safe, cheap (for now), good weather. Looking forward to returning one day.
- nickstinemates 3y agoWhat tech conference was in Kosovo? I feel like most are in all of the normal destinations and would like to add a few that are in more interesting locales.
- simultsop 3y agoThere are ones that like this one https://doku.tech/ https://doku.tech/ https://flossk.org/ https://flossk.org/ https://ickosovo.com/events https://ickosovo.com/events https://kosict.com/ https://kosict.com/ https://itp-prizren.com/events/ https://itp-prizren.com/events/ https://makerspaceprizren.com/events/ https://makerspaceprizren.com/events/ Many more others, am also proud to be early student (shortly) of: https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/james-halliday/ https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/james-halliday/ who visited: https://flossk.org/projects/prishtina-hackerspace/ https://flossk.org/projects/prishtina-hackerspace/ and mesmerized everyone with his skills and knowledge.
- nickstinemates 3y agoThank you
- polemic 3y agoFOSS4G (Free and Open Source for Geospatial Information Systems) - https://2023.foss4g.org/ https://2023.foss4g.org/ It's a yearly global conference series run by volunteers. There are also regional versions, e.g. FOSS4G NA will be in Baltimore this year (https://foss4gna.org/ https://foss4gna.org/), Asia will be in Seoul (https://foss4g.asia/2023/ https://foss4g.asia/2023/) and Oceania will be Auckland (https://2023.foss4g-oceania.org/ https://2023.foss4g-oceania.org/). It's a great conference if you're interested in Mapping / Geo tech.
- tamimio 3y agoOr maybe it’s a honeypot, directly or indirectly.
- reincoder 3y agoThe site itself is apparently hosted in Netherlands. -_- https://host.io/basehost.eu https://host.io/basehost.eu
- bfung 3y agoLooks like this post is related to another high ranked front page post atm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837273 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837273 In the other post & comments, they mention hosting things in Kosovo after the person who ran a tor exit node was tried by not convicted of child porn.
- ricardo81 3y ago>Of course DDoS and other attacks are a problem I wonder if the pipes into the country are smaller than the demand for people to circumvent said reasons for hosting there and said attention.
- dankai 3y agoThis is a service by the guy who was raided for operating a TOR exit node. https://lowendbox.com/blog/man-found-guilty-of-child-porn-because-he-ran-a-tor-exit-node-the-story-of-william-weber/ https://lowendbox.com/blog/man-found-guilty-of-child-porn-be...
- costco 3y agoProtip: These kinds of hosts are the same kinds of hosts who would sell the data on your server for $5-10k because they have no moral backbone.
- benxh 3y agoThis reads like a Serbian owned business from the North of Kosovo. But anybody following the local politics would know that: 1) Corruption as an issue is disappearing in Kosovo, especially compared to Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia where it flourishes. 2) Corruption of police is practically impossible in Kosovo. 3) The IX is literally under USAID/EU control, good luck not getting blocked. 4) The North of Kosovo until this year was lawless. What they wrote about the east makes 0 sense. All in all, this is either a honeypot, or somebody trying to discredit Kosovo.
- hulitu 3y ago> Corruption as an issue is disappearing in Kosovo You mean Kosovo will be better than US or EU ?
- basequal 3y agoI like to have some of what you are having giving the following statement. If you want to evaluate the state of judiciary systems, just take a look at the number of international companies with local hubs present in each country. If you want to evaluate the state of the economic system, just evaluate the number of payment providers available in each country. And if you want to know where the drug hub is, just look who is selling the drugs in the neighbourhood. It's far from ideal in all the countries you listed, but putting Kosovo up top is a joke.
- WaxProlix 3y agoProbably from this top comment on the TOR exit node fella, if you want more context about why this is being posted now and how it applies to HN more broadly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837438
- asadm 3y agoThat is correct. I just wanted to bring more attention to this bizarre site.
- aleks5678 3y agoProtection from state? Is this a joke?
- Thoeu388 3y agoKosovo also has very cheap electricity from coal. One time it was bitcoin mining hub. I would be worried about reliability. It is probably semi residential optical line.
- isoprophlex 3y agoHow's the protection from the proverbial balaclava wearing thugs applying a crowbar to your server? (Or more likely someone handing your host some cash to accidentally disappear your VPS?)
- malikNF 3y agoWouldn't the same arguments that are for hosting there going to be the reasons not to as well?
- trolan 3y agoYes. See the recent legal actions around Andrew Tate as further evidence of 'its great the government is terrible to these other people' is only good for so long.
- notheisenberg 3y agoKosovo is internationally recognized mainly by non-shithole governments, and it maintains close security cooperation with the United States. However, there are websites with a slavic-serb focus that aim to discredit Kosovo. This seems to be one.
- lazy_moderator1 3y agowell I'd argue that Kosovo recognition map contains some of the most shithole governments on Earth so it all cancels out :D
- bdangubic 3y agopretty bold to call half of all the countries on Earth shitholes ;)
- toast0 3y agoI mean, you've got to draw a line, and wherever you draw it, some countries are going to be shitholes. But, the GP's claim was that countries that recognize Kosovo are mainly non-shitholes (without naming names, there's certainly some in the list). There's no claim that the non-recognizers are or are not shitholes.
- rcbdev 3y agoLooking at a recognition map of Kosovo, you'd have to try very hard not to see that almost all educated, developed and stable democracies are on the side that does recognize it while all the unsavory, unstable and dictatorial regimes claim to not recognize it. (Even though countries like China will still de-facto recognize Kosovo by accepting their passports for travel) Make of this what you will.
- darkwater 3y agoAnd then there is Spain...
- 3y ago
- bilekas 3y agoThis is pretty blatant.. you almost have to respect it. But 100% sure even if I was not doing anything illegal but potentially not in my governments interest. Corruption breeds corruption so you could never trust a company like this to even consider being in your interest if there is a higher bidder.
- vbezhenar 3y agoSounds like a honeypot. If I would want to host an illegal content, I'd use boring provider and route everything via tor. Stable onion address and disposable web gateways which could be hosted everywhere as they don't carry any particular risks of seizure.
- MikeBVaughn 3y agoI'm curious about the thought process of people who use services like this. If the datacenter operators are being truthful, then posting mycrimes dot txt on the internet seems like a bad idea. Fundamentally, they're saying "we operate in a comparatively lawless area, and we're doing <x>, <y>, and <z>." But, all things being equal, I'd expect things like regional militias and organized crime to fill the vacuum of state power, and explicitly saying what you do seems like it opens you up to getting shaken down or worse. On the other hand, they also have no real obligation to be honest about the service they're providing. If they're already publicly claiming to be doing crimes, then being dishonest about the security and safety of the services provided is a drop in the already-quite-full bucket. My guess is that unless they're extremely principled about their specific view of free speech, the risks inherent in the venture mean they don't believe this necessarily has, say, decades-long sustainability as a business model. If so, then maximizing near-term profit by cutting corners or abusing access to customer data is probably a very tempting option. Looking at the angles, I have a hard time seeing who'd want to use a service like this.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoI’d like to distribute training data. (I’m one of the authors of The Pile, which was recently knocked offline when The Eye stopped hosting it due to threats.) I also have the entire books3 dataset — the original epub files, not text extractions — sitting around on a hard drive. Many people have wanted metadata or to reprocess the set for their own purposes. I’d like to release those, but distributing 190,000 epubs is a little… hard. Sadly 50TB of traffic per month is almost nothing when it comes to disturbing 800GB datasets. I’d spend 150 euros a month for a solution, but it’d need to be heftier.
- WildGreenLeave 3y agoWhat about P2P like a torrent? I think plenty of people would be open to seeding this. (I, personally, would love to see things like this)
- ddorian43 3y agoJust rent a seedbox. Example: https://pulsedmedia.com/ https://pulsedmedia.com/
- ahartmetz 3y agoCtrl-F corrupt... ah yes, their frankness is amusing!
- Temporary_31337 3y agoFurther, as Kosovo is an extremely corrupt country, we are able to bribe both executive and judicative as well as getting information about court orders and raids before execution, enabling us to move servers out of the affected location, protecting our clients in any situation.
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- Hamuko 3y agoEither bribery is legal in Kosovo or it's a crime minor enough that you can bribe your way out of it, because that seems like a pretty clear admission of guilt.
- wkat4242 3y agoWell in countries where bribery is a thing, the law just isn't that black and white so the fact whether it's legal or not loses its value.
- locallost 3y agoThis is a very weird statement: > Furthermore, the lack of recognition (or even existence at all) by many countries means that Kosovo is less susceptible to outside influence and pressure from both East and West, which can provide a safe haven for content that is regularly targeted by state actors and similar. I would think the opposite is true -- being only partially recognized makes you very dependent on the countries countries that recognized you. If e.g. the US wants something done it is much easier to bully a country that enjoys their protection and is not 100% recognized.
- mtmail 3y ago"101 out of 193 (52.3%) United Nations member states, 22 out of 27 (81.5%) European Union member states, 27 out of 31 (87.1%) NATO member states, and 33 out of 57 (57.9%) Organisation of Islamic Cooperation member states have recognised Kosovo." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_Kosovo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_recognition_of_K... (includes a map)
- peppermint_gum 3y agoThis is either a joke or a scam/honeypot designed to fool gullible westerners. Kosovo definitely is a corrupt country, but it doesn't mean you don't have to keep your criminal activities on the low. If you attract the attention of the western agencies, they will absolutely go after you. This isn't Russia, they're west-aligned and they don't want to annoy their western partners too much. Also, this site doesn't even seem to be hosted in Kosovo: https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/query?searchtext=192.71.151.17 https://apps.db.ripe.net/db-web-ui/query?searchtext=192.71.1...
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- MrGilbert 3y agoLinks tend to disappear. It's always good to include a summary of what this link shows. So I guess you are referring to the fact that Pronect Technology Ltd is located in Zagreb, Croatia?
- LinuxBender 3y agoVery similar to this were a handful of resellers of resellers in Amsterdam that would totally ignore abuse reports and allow hosting anything. They were half a block from The Hague and an Interpol office. They would get raided a few times a year. I am still unsure how they managed to run for a long time unless they were a honeypot looking for specific targets.
- wkat4242 3y agoWasn't this the cyberbunker? It sure sounds like them except for the location.
- LinuxBender 3y agoI don't know who was ultimately the upstream reseller or hosting provider. These were all dodgy fly-by-night resellers of resellers that were in the same place. Their CIDR blocks are still active and I still get bad traffic from them. Each CIDR block was swipped out to each reseller.