[afnog] Cloud Innovation Displays Very Poor, If Not Criminal, Netizenship

Sat May 9 11:54:22 UTC 2020

To whom it may concern,

On May 8, Mark Think posted a claim to multiple lists that Cloud Innovation
was abusing an ASN (37353) that didn’t belong to them (Cloud Innovation)
but rather belonged to Seacom through their acquisition of MacroLAN.

While we regret this unfortunate incident, Mark’s claims that it was
criminal or bad netizenship on the part of Cloud Innovation is without
foundation and utterly incorrect.

As shown below in the attached document from Paul Wollner(Ex-CTO of
Macrolan who created IRR routes to allow Macrolan to announce Cloud
Innovation's prefix); letter from Link Infinity International Ltd. (Link
Infinity), A customer of Cloud Innovation; and attached LOA from LARUS
authorizing IPDC Solutions to announce the prefix with origin AS134190.
And a Letter from IPDC. This was an innocent mistake committed by third
parties and had nothing to do with any action by Cloud Innovation or LARUS.

Here’s what happened:

Cloud Innovation delegated a /24 to Link Infinity, an ISP in December 2019.

Link Infinity further delegated that same /24 to IPDC and asked Cloud
innovation to issue an LOA, which we did. The LOA specifically required
IPDC to use its own ASN to announce the space (AS134190).

IPDC subsequently authorized one of its customers to use the said prefix.

For reasons still unknown to Cloud Innovation, IPDC and their customer set
up a BGP session wherein their customer used AS37353 as the origin to
advertise prefix 156.241.3.0/24.

Upon discovering the announcement, rather than contact Cloud Innovation,
Mark contacted IPDC who provided him with an incomplete explanation blaming
their customer and Mark, not realizing that Cloud Innovation was not the
customer in question posted far and wide about the event. It is unclear to
us why he chose to do this rather than contact us to try and resolve the
issue.

A contributing factor to the erroneous BGP configuration by IPDC's customer
may have been data contained in some outdated IRR route objects for
156.241.0.0/16 which have subsequently been deleted.

As soon as we became aware of the problem (via Mark’s email), we began to
investigate the situation. As soon as it was clear that this was the result
of third-party actions, we reached out to Mark privately to let him know
what we knew and that we were still investigating. We delayed making a
public statement in order to try and ascertain all of the facts of the
situation. We prefer not to make public statements based on incomplete
information.

We apologize to the community for our small part in this unfortunate
incident and assure you that we work very hard to remain good netizens and
will address any concerns promptly when they come to our attention.

Sincerely,

Lu Heng
CEO
Cloud Innovations

Attached:
1. Letter from Paul Wollner
2. Letter from Link Infinity
3. LOA Issued to IPDC Solutions for announcing 156.241.3.0/24 from AS134190
        4.     Letter from IPDC

FYI: LARUS is proving IP management service for Cloud Innovation, while
LARUS is also providing IP management service to other third parties in all
regions, for full disclosure, LARUS and Cloud Innovation are headed by same
CEO.

Content of those letters have been posted here for your convince:

*IPDC:*

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [Perusal of Cloud Innovation Ltd]

IPDC Solutions Pte Ltd (IPDC) is a customer of Cloud Innovation Ltd and
over the course of our corporate relationship we were given the authority
to use address block 156.241.3.0/24 since 9th December 2019.

On 12th December 2019, we have delegated that address block to our client.
Following which our client further instructed us to announce the prefix
with AS37353. In good will after minimal verification through WHOIS’ IP
Prefix we have proceeded to execute our client’s request.

On 7th May 2020 IPDC was then contacted by SEACOM, the legitimate holder of
record for that ASN and have since learned that the customer’s use of that
ASN was erroneous and not permitted by SEACOM and immediate action has been
taken to rectify this situation.

IPDC would like to apologize for our lack of attention in conducting
thorough verification and wish to highlight that the involvement of Cloud
Innovation Ltd in the entire process was providing the addresses to us and
that we truly apologize as we understand that this incident may have
indirectly implicated Cloud Innovation Ltd.

IPDC however, does not wish to disclose our client information and our
client information shall remain confidential under present circumstances.
Once again, we apologize for our shortcomings.

*Link Infinity:*

To whom it may concern,

We at HK Infinity International Ltd are a customer of Cloud Innovation and
in the course received rights to use 156.241.3.0/24 from them. Beginning
December, 2019, we delegated the right to announce this prefix to IPDC
Solutions Pte Ltd. (IPDC). We asked Cloud Innovation to provide an LOA
authorizing them to announce the space which was subsequently received.
IPDC subsequently and without our knowledge delegated this space to one of
their customers and allowed them to originate it from AS37353.

This announcement was not authorized by us, nor is it permitted by the LOA
provided by Cloud Innovation.

Unfortunately, we were not aware of the situation until after it had
already been resolved.

It was never our intent to violate the LOA or to allow the prefix to be
announced from a hijacked ASN. We do not condone this and apologize
sincerely to the community for what has happened here.

Sincere Apologies,

*Paul Wollner:*

8 May 2020

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN

In the light of the recent email on NAPAfrica mailing list, I would just
like to clear the air.

The IP route objects were created by myself for Cloud Innovation when they
signed up as a client of Macrolan ( now SEACOM) as they didn't have their
own AS.

At the time I was working for Macrolan (now SEACOM). I left the employment
of SEACOM in October 2019.

It appears that when Cloud Innovation's contract with SEACOM came to an
end, the route objects were never cleaned up.

This occurred after I left SEACOM's employment. Since leaving, I have no
access to these objects.

Regards

Paul Wollner
082-786-9776
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