up vote 0 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

i've got someone claiming to have a dump of my database. i'm not sure whether he is talking baloney or not. but just in case, how would i go about reporting such actions to his ISP?

link|improve this question
2  
No proof, no gain. What should the ISP do without a proof? And what has the ISP to do with a hacking of your box? Report to the law enforcement (of his country). – mailq Sep 2 '11 at 10:04
i realise. but since isps do have a place to report spam, why not one to report hackers. i have since found out that this was indeed a baloney claim. thanks for the reply though. – doxin Sep 2 '11 at 10:20
1  
What will an ISP do with proof? Someone claims (or actually does) get into a box connected to a network and steals information off of it, did you think an ISP will dispatch Internet ninjas to punish them? I've never heard of someone reporting a home burglary to the department of transportation because the burglar used a car to gain access to the owner's property. If there was actual monetary or confidential information theft involved, call law enforcement. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 2 '11 at 10:42
And it would have to be actual proof that confidential (i.e., medical records, identity information, things that have laws attached) was stolen or that your business was impacted to the tune of six digits or more. Otherwise you're going to get giggles and a slow shuffle of the report to the trash, because there's no way they're going to dedicate the work it takes to tracking down someone who stole logins to a small server; the cost and manpower simply doesn't add up for them and they wouldn't care less. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 2 '11 at 10:44
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

Most ISPs have an "abuse@..." mail address to send complaints to; whether or not they'll do anything with any mail that you send to it is another matter entirely, though. @mailq's right; it's a legal matter, so report it to a legal agency.

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote 0 down vote

You later said that you believe the claim was false, but if other claims come in like this, really the ISP won't care in all likelihood about their users doing things like this. You could add the name to their abuse (depends on the ISP...do a whois on the domain and see who the contacts are, or report it to a contact form on the website) email and there's a remote chance that if they're flooded with complaints about a particular user they'll do something eventually. A remote chance.

ISP's take action against things that impact their service. A user being a PITA is not in their jurisdiction if it's not slowing their network or getting them blacklisted. That's for law enforcement. And even then, law enforcement tends to not care about someone claiming to have a "hacker" break into their system unless there's a really big dollar figure attached or it involves loss of confidential records, in which case there's still backlash against the company that didn't secure the records in the first place (hence why there are laws forcing hospitals, schools, etc. to report certain types of data theft to those affected.)

This sort of thing happens all the time; if you believe your system to have been compromised, you start going through your audit logs and scan for malware and HARDEN YOUR SYSTEM with secure passwords and IDS checking and secure anything facing the public internet to the point where you should know if something's been compromised. Nine times out of ten law enforcement won't care (and usually don't have the manpower to do anything nor the technological expertise to understand what you're talking about anyway.) If you have a webserver, check the access logs. There's a reason you still find random strings from malware 10+ years old knocking on your server and strings that append redirection in attempts to proxy through a misconfigured system. Constant knocking on doors isn't new and isn't going away any time soon, and your only protection is having a good defense in place to protect your server.

link|improve this answer
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.