[HN Gopher] Why Host in Kosovo?
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Why Host in Kosovo?
Author : asadm
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-07-23 17:41 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (basehost.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (basehost.eu)
| peppermint_gum wrote:
| This 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=192.71.1...
| [deleted]
| MrGilbert wrote:
| Links 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 wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| Wasn't this the cyberbunker? It sure sounds like them except
| for the location.
| Atlas22 wrote:
| Any product/service directly and publicly marketed to criminals
| is a honeypot (or will soon be). There is no reason for a real
| business (legal or illegal) to prefer criminal customers in
| good faith as all they bring is problems.
|
| There are many agencies around the globe that set these up and
| continue to operate after siezing them to catch the low hanging
| fruit criminals. Its a lot easier/cheaper to lure criminals
| expose themselves directly than it is to actually
| investigate/track/hunt them down. Its pretty much the quantity
| over quality approach.
| tamimio wrote:
| Or maybe it's a honeypot, directly or indirectly.
| bfung wrote:
| Looks like this post is related to another high ranked front page
| post atm: 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 wrote:
| >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.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| How'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?)
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| People have been openly selling drugs on Instagram and Snapchat
| for years. This isn't really any different.
| malikNF wrote:
| Wouldn't the same arguments that are for hosting there going to
| be the reasons not to as well?
| trolan wrote:
| Yes. 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 wrote:
| Kosovo 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 wrote:
| well I'd argue that Kosovo recognition map contains some of the
| most shithole governments on Earth so it all cancels out :D
| bdangubic wrote:
| pretty bold to call half of all the countries on Earth
| shitholes ;)
| toast0 wrote:
| I 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.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| It's bold but also a sad truth (or close to it). We're mostly
| the lucky ones here on this site but we're a minority.
|
| I'd personally consider dictatorships but also countries with
| heavy corruption and anti-free speech, and anti-lgbt laws
| shithole countries. Others may have other definitions of
| course. But I'm glad to live where I live.
| rcbdev wrote:
| Looking 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 wrote:
| And then there is Spain...
| ardit33 wrote:
| Spain was a fascist country until the 80s.... they have
| their own agenda, and not a role model of human rights.
| (i.e. Catalonia independence, where they put the elected
| leaders of the region in jail or exile just two years
| ago).
| bilekas wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Sounds 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.
| TDiblik wrote:
| "If I would ..."
| [deleted]
| TDiblik wrote:
| TIL HN does not support emojis, so the original comment lost
| the desired meaning :(
| MikeBVaughn wrote:
| I'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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| You could host BitTorrent seeds or something. Nobody is coming
| for you internationally over that.
| simultsop wrote:
| If you are good with that you can help the guys upgrade their
| tools: https://kosix.net/ the ISP's there are new to the
| business.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| Probably people who are committing little crimes that can get
| you in trouble but not worth international level resources?
| Scamming seniors perhaps?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That is kinda India's domain though. Aided by their even
| lower wages and seniors being susceptible to phone calls, not
| digital comms. "Hello this is Microsoft calling, we need to
| fix a problem with your computer". There seems to be an
| upsurge in this crime lately.
|
| Similar to Serbia India's government seems highly acceptant
| of these scammer callcenters. They seem to operate without
| any legal intervention. IMO the country should be hit with
| sanctions for it, that'll end it in no time.
| TylerLives wrote:
| While Serbian government is also very corrupt, Kosovo has
| its own government now, made up entirely (to my knowledge)
| of Albanian people who conquered it.
| lazy_moderator1 wrote:
| that's not really a thing in Serbia though
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I'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.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| Just rent a seedbox. Example: https://pulsedmedia.com/
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| What 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)
| limteary wrote:
| I've used a similar site for DNS and some hosting.
|
| The main reason was having to deal with CSAM and copyright
| reports, the more common registrars/providers would threaten to
| pull me if I didn't reply in 24 or 48 hours and eventually I
| would get kicked off.
|
| I was hosting copyrighted content, I wasn't hosting CSAM but
| there was legal content involving minors but average provider
| doesn't care and will argue with you or say it violates their
| TOS. These shady hosts/registrars just don't care, sure they
| might vanish one day but if you have backup it's fine.
| mtmail wrote:
| I used a shady domain registrar (.com) for fun. They had
| their legal contact in Ethiopia, didn't ask for anything
| other than an email address and would even accept cash money
| sent to them. All kinds of crypto currencies, too. I used
| Paypal and their annual invoices were shady looking too,
| always ending up in spam.
|
| Yes, they just didn't care. Then one day they said I had to
| send them a copy of my passport to continue. Also if I wanted
| to cancel or transfer the main. I let the domain expire
| instead (got domain squatted but I managed to get it back a
| couple of years later).
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Ctrl-F corrupt... ah yes, their frankness is amusing!
| dpedu wrote:
| > We utilise legacy IP addresses that cannot be revoked by RIPE
|
| What does this mean? It sounds like ASN spoofing/squatting.
| schroeding wrote:
| Probably 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/le...
| Mindwipe wrote:
| It'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.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Probably 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
| asadm wrote:
| That is correct. I just wanted to bring more attention to this
| bizarre site.
| reincoder wrote:
| The site itself is apparently hosted in Netherlands. -_-
|
| https://host.io/basehost.eu
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| If 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
| wodenokoto wrote:
| Taiwan 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 wrote:
| Taiwan also hosts one of the few GCP datacenters in (east) Asia
| aleks5678 wrote:
| Protection from state? Is this a joke?
| marci wrote:
| For a bit more context:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36837273 (Man found guilty
| of child porn because he ran a Tor exit node)
| dankai wrote:
| This 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-be...
| Temporary_31337 wrote:
| Further, 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| polemic wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| What 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.
| polemic wrote:
| FOSS4G (Free and Open Source for Geospatial Information
| Systems) - 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/), Asia will be in
| Seoul (https://foss4g.asia/2023/) and Oceania will be
| Auckland (https://2023.foss4g-oceania.org/). It's a great
| conference if you're interested in Mapping / Geo tech.
| simultsop wrote:
| There are ones that like this one https://doku.tech/
| https://flossk.org/ https://ickosovo.com/events
| https://kosict.com/ https://itp-prizren.com/events/
| https://makerspaceprizren.com/events/
|
| Many more others, am also proud to be early student (shortly)
| of: https://frontendmasters.com/teachers/james-halliday/ who
| visited: https://flossk.org/projects/prishtina-hackerspace/
| and mesmerized everyone with his skills and knowledge.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Thank you
| myko wrote:
| Having spent some time there myself, I agree with this. The
| corruption is more than we expect in the US, but not on this
| level and getting better all the time.
| Thoeu388 wrote:
| Kosovo 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.
| al2o3cr wrote:
| LOL reminds me of how a couple dummies get caught every year or
| so by RentAHitman.com
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Reminds me of the Silk road owner who was totally scammed by a
| biker gang to pay for a hit the police think never happened.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Either 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 wrote:
| Well 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| "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_K...
| (includes a map)
| figassis wrote:
| I 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.
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