Why Host in Kosovo? | Hacker News Reader

Why Host in Kosovo?

basehost.eu

188 pointsasadm72 comments

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...

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?

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.

Wasn't this the cyberbunker? It sure sounds like them except for the location.

I 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.

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.

> It is important to note, however, that while a location like Kosovo may provide added protection, it is not a guarantee against censorship or attacks. Hosting content that is controversial or politically sensitive always carries some level of risk, and it is important to carefully consider the potential consequences before hosting such content.

This smells like it was written by ChatGPT

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.

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.

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.

Thank you

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.

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.

There isn't an extreme level of corruption by any means described here. Getting tipped off to raids, warrants, inquiries, taps etc is pretty easy to achieve even in the United States. Even getting local authorities to run interference to give you some time is reasonably affordable.

Look at the corruption in cities like Atlanta, Detroit, New Orleans. Kasim Reed's staff selling machine guns, Burr Ellis hosting parties from his private floor in jail. Sydney Dorsey having his deputies assassinate the rival sheriff. A 10 year school cheating scandal, the 2020 election, kickbacks galore at the world's busiest airport. That's just Atlanta, many major cities have similar or worse corruption issues and it's fairly simple to tap into. In many cases necessary if you want to do business in the city at all.

> the 2020 election

I assume the corruption referred to here is trump's attempt to steal the election. The US is in a weird spot, corruption is rampant in rural America, spotty in some cities (usually noticed & prosecuted), but federally corruption has been low until recently. It's nice to see corruption being addressed in these cases (i.e., the trump indictments).

Hopefully the US doesn't slide into the everyday corruption common in some areas of the world, as long as the US prosecutes without fear or favor the country will end up in a good spot wrt not normalizing corruption, though it does feel like an uphill battle given the political situation.

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

That is correct. I just wanted to bring more attention to this bizarre site.

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.

Probably people who are committing little crimes that can get you in trouble but not worth international level resources? Scamming seniors perhaps?

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.

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.

that's not really a thing in Serbia though

You could host BitTorrent seeds or something. Nobody is coming for you internationally over that.

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.

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.

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)

Just rent a seedbox. Example: https://pulsedmedia.com/

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.

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).

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.

"If I would ..."

TIL HN does not support emojis, so the original comment lost the desired meaning :(

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.

"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)

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

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?)

> We utilise legacy IP addresses that cannot be revoked by RIPE

What does this mean? It sounds like ASN spoofing/squatting.

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...

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.

The site itself is apparently hosted in Netherlands. -_-

https://host.io/basehost.eu

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.

Taiwan also hosts one of the few GCP datacenters in (east) Asia

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)

This 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.

> Corruption as an issue is disappearing in Kosovo

You mean Kosovo will be better than US or EU ?

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Protip: 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.

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...

People have been openly selling drugs on Instagram and Snapchat for years. This isn't really any different.

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.

>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.

Ctrl-F corrupt... ah yes, their frankness is amusing!

LOL reminds me of how a couple dummies get caught every year or so by RentAHitman.com

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.

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.

Or maybe it’s a honeypot, directly or indirectly.

Protection from state? Is this a joke?

Wouldn't the same arguments that are for hosting there going to be the reasons not to as well?

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.

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.

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.

pretty bold to call half of all the countries on Earth shitholes ;)

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.

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.

And then there is Spain...

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).

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.

well I'd argue that Kosovo recognition map contains some of the most shithole governments on Earth so it all cancels out :D

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