What is 65.222.202.0/24?

A breakdown of the suballocations of the Verizon Business 65.222.202.0/24 block, mentioned in connection with Torsploit:

Block	Start	End	CustName:	Description:
65.222.202.0/28	65.222.202.0	65.222.202.15	Science Applications Int	SAIC (US Defense contractor)
65.222.202.16/28	65.222.202.16	65.222.202.31	Old Dominion Internet	Possibly dormant VA corporation
65.222.202.32/28	65.222.202.32	65.222.202.47	FTS2001/US Government	Federal Technology Service
65.222.202.48/29	65.222.202.48	65.222.202.55	Unknown	"Torsploit" block
65.222.202.56/29	65.222.202.56	65.222.202.63	Universal Machine Co of Pottsdown Inc	Universal Machines (www.umc-oscar.com)
65.222.202.64/28	65.222.202.64	65.222.202.79	Kitron	Electronic Manufacturing Service
65.222.202.80/29	65.222.202.80	65.222.202.87	Morningside Sports Farm	Horse Training Farm in VA
65.222.202.88/29	65.222.202.88	65.222.202.95	MetTel, Inc	Telecommunications Service Provider
65.222.202.96/29	65.222.202.96	65.222.202.103	Guidestar	NPO Information Service
65.222.202.104/29	65.222.202.104	65.222.202.111	Walt Disney Company	Mickey Mouse outfit
65.222.202.112/28	65.222.202.112	65.222.202.127	Dental Concepts	Dentistry
65.222.202.128/29	65.222.202.128	65.222.202.135	GARP Research & Securities	Financial Analysts
65.222.202.136/29	65.222.202.136	65.222.202.143	Assured Packaging Inc	Metal boxes
65.222.202.144/28	65.222.202.145	65.222.202.159	Unknown
66.222.202.160/28	66.222.202.161	66.222.202.174	Unknown
65.222.202.176/29	65.222.202.176	65.222.202.183	Butler Medical Transport	Patient Transport Services
65.222.202.184/29	65.222.202.184	65.222.202.191	Federated IT	Government IT contractor
65.222.202.192/28	65.222.202.192	65.222.202.207	Old Dominion Internet	Possibly dormant VA corporation
65.222.202.208/29	65.222.202.208	65.222.202.215	Pharmceuticals International, Inc	Healthcare
65.222.202.216/29	65.222.202.216	65.222.202.223	Unknown
65.222.202.224/29	65.222.202.224	65.222.202.231	Unknown
65.222.202.232/29	65.222.202.232	65.222.202.239	Live Nation	Events Company, CA
65.222.202.240/28	65.222.202.240	65.222.202.255	Georgetown Dat School	Washington DC school

Torsploit: is 65.222.202.53 the NSA?

There has been a lot of chatter in the past day or so about the takedown of an Irish outfit called Freedom Hosting which hosted a number of "hidden services" on Tor, ranging from Tormail (which allows anonymous email communication) to.. well, Really Bad Stuff that you don't want to know about. Basically.. Law Enforcement (LE) appear to have discovered the real-world location of these servers on the other side of Tor and have busted the alleged operator.

What gets interesting is that some of these Tor services were infected with an injection script that attempted to reveal the real IP address of the the visitor through a security flaw in the version of Firefox in the Tor Bundle. There's an interesting analysis of the script here and the long and the short of it is that the injected code attempt to call back to 65.222.202.53, in order to track the Tor users involved.

So.. who is 65.222.202.53? Well, it seems to be a Verizon Business IP (part of a "ghost block" of 65.222.202.48/29) in the Washington DC area. You know.. the home of several government agencies or branches thereof. But now the Internet is awash with rumours that this IP address belongs to the NSA. But what evidence is there?

A lot of the fuss seems to have happened because of this tweet from Baneki Privacy Labs.

What Baneki are saying is that the whole 65.222.202.0/24 block (the "C block" in classful parlance) is owned by a government contractor called SAIC (apparently not the SAIC who own MG Motors!) and that SAIC are connected to the DoD. Although SAIC are certainly a military contractor, the error that they are making is to believe the report from DomainTools which appears to be misinterpreting the allocations in that particular block.

So, does SAIC (listed here as SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INT) own the whole /24? No. Verizon has simply allocated the first /28 in that block to SAIC, and it appears the DomainTools is misinterpreting that data.

NetRange:       65.222.202.0 - 65.222.202.15
CIDR:           65.222.202.0/28
OriginAS:   
NetName:        UU-65-222-202-D4
NetHandle:      NET-65-222-202-0-1
Parent:         NET-65-192-0-0-1
NetType:        Reassigned
Comment:        Addresses within this block are non-portable.
RegDate:        2006-09-14
Updated:        2006-09-14
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-65-222-202-0-1

CustName:       SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INT
Address:        47332 EAGAN MCALLISTER LN
Address:        RM 1112 1st fl
City:           LEXINGTON PARK
StateProv:      MD
PostalCode:     20653-2461
Country:        US
RegDate:        2006-09-14
Updated:        2011-03-19
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/customer/C01446299

Other suballocations is that block do include government agencies, but just a couple of IPs away from the mystery IP is 65.222.202.56/29 which belongs to an industrial supply company called Universal Machines. Whoever uses 65.222.202.53 is very likely to be a corporate or government entity, but really that's pretty much all you can tell from the Verizon Business IP. DomainTools is great but as with any automated tool.. sometimes you need to double-check what it reports back.

But then Baneki make another claim.. that obviously 65.222.202.53 belongs to the NSA, because the NSA controls the entire 65.192.0.0/11 range (65.192.0.1 to 65.223.255.254) which is about 2 million IPs.

 This is what they were referring to:

Umm, well.. no. That's just another block allocated to Verizon Business. You may as well argue that everything in 0.0.0.0/0 belongs to the NSA on the same principle. Actually.. maybe it does, but that's another matter entirely. Again.. Robtex is a great tool but you sometimes need to sanity-check the output.

It may surprise you to learn that law enforcement officers and intelligence agencies are not normally complete fucking idiots when it comes to guarding their IP addresses. They do not (for example) sign up to Silk Road with their @fbi.gov email addresses or poke around the underweb from an NSA IP address range. Well, not normally..

I am not saying that the injection wasn't the work of the NSA. Or the CIA, FBI, DOD, IRS or another other Alphabet Soup Agency. But let's see some real evidence first, eh?

UPDATE: I had a closer look at the users of the /24 here. It's a mix of businesses and government organisations and contractors, not surprising given the physical location of the /24.