Sorry, as a certified 'geek' I just assumed everyone knew what I was talking about.
> -- Daniel, (New York, NY) 20-Mar-02 wrote:
>
> This is awfully technical. I would greatly
> appreciate if you could, in addition to providing
> me with the raw data, make a presentation of what
> is going on. I, for example, have no idea what a
> "ping" is - please explain it to me.
>
>
When you connect to a web site, you type in a name (more correctly its domain name).
Here's an example: Azzam is the queen termite of the Jihadi web sites -- let's look at the feed to Azzam from here in Britain (the .uk is the country code for the United Kingdom):
http://www.azzam.co.uk/Just as a pervert in a chat room thought he was arranging to meet a 13 year-old girl but was really talking to a police officer in Santa Monica (this really happened), your computer is not communicating with a server here in Britain.
So where is it really?
Here's how to find out: use a networking command called 'ping'. This command is available on Linux, Macintosh, or Windows. If you are on a Windows computer: open up a command prompt (Start Menu -> Run... -> then type 'cmd' in the box). Then ttype 'ping' and the name of any website you'd like:
--------------------------
Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-1999 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>ping www.azzam.co.uk
Pinging wf.dnsvr.com [64.21.143.24] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.21.143.24: bytes=32 time=101ms TTL=113
Reply from 64.21.143.24: bytes=32 time=100ms TTL=113
Ping statistics for 64.21.143.24:
Packets: Sent = 2, Received = 2, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 100ms, Maximum = 101ms, Average = 100ms
--------------------------
My computer just sent several messages (packets) to the computer serving
up www.azzam.co.uk and it answered from 1000's of miles in fractions of
a second.
So, now what are those numbers [64.21.143.24]?
A unique IP number identifies all devices connected to the Internet. "IP" stands for Internet Protocol, which is the name for a standardized identification scheme. It is via IP numbers that computers on the Internet know how to identify each other.
These IP addresses are assigned to specific people and businesses when the website was registered. Someone owns that IP address -- just as you own the address of your house.
Let's look up the real owner. Go to the website:
http://www.checkdomain.com/Type the 4 numbers in the box (be sure to put the periods in). The registered owner of the IP address is returned:
----------------------------
64.21.143.24 (IP Address)
Registrant:
Net Access Corporation
1719b Route 10E, Suite 111
Parsippany, NJ 07054 US
Coordinator:
Net Access Corporation (ZN77-ARIN) [email protected]
800-638-6336
Name Servers:
NS1.NAC.NET 207.99.0.1
NS2.NAC.NET 207.99.0.2
----------------------------
Haw! It's not here in sunny Ol'England after all. www.azzam.co.uk
is being broadcast from New Jersey.
The ISP probably doesn't know that he's feeding Al-Qaeda off his servers to the world. Perhaps someone should tell him. You've got a name, physical address, email to their legal department and a telephone to chat.
The ISP will do one of two things -- he will either enforce the "terms of acceptable use" policy that he made all his customers sign -- or he will ignore you and go on collecting Al-Qaeda's money.
A responsible ISP will probably do the former.
Especially if the ISP is so close to 'ground-zero'. When European hackers broke into Azzam.com's German subscriber list they found the e-mail address for Said Bahaji, the computer geek of the 9-11 hijack cell in Hamburg.
Now, Al-Qaeda has become used to people like me who keep sending letters to the ISPs hosting them.
Were getting even more complex. You might need to ask the neighbourhood geek to help out here.
Use Netscape (MS-Internet Explorer does the wrong thing here) -- From the menu bar at the top select (View -> Page Source). Now, ask the geek about this line:
< frame src="http://66.96.205.195/~azzam/"He'll mumble something incomprehensible about "page re-directs" and "nested frames". But we already know what to do with the four numbers. Go back to www.checkdomain.com and type them in:
----------------------------
66.96.205.195 (IP Address)
Registrant:
Network Operations Center Inc.
P.O. Box 400
Bloomsburg, PA 17815-0400 US
Coordinator:
Arcus, Matthew (ZMA1-ARIN) [email protected]
570-784-2491 x7
Name Servers:
NS1.HOSTNOC.NET 66.96.193.3
NS2.HOSTNOC.NET 66.96.194.3
----------------------------
Now, you've got a (non-responsive) name, a blind PO Box, email that
does not get answered, and a telephone to chat. Give them a call --
"The number you have dialed is not in service .....".
Now you'll have to call the Bloomsburg PA police department and find out that the "Network Operations Centre" is really owned by "Burst.Net" host of over 35,000 websites (a lot of which are 'adult content' and some of which are Al-Qaeda or other neo-nazi hate sites).
They won't respond. In fact they don't have to because 'government entities' won't let them shut it down.
-- Johnathan