Published on 8th August 2022, 13:00:00 UTC
On Monday, August 1st, 2022, Spamhaus Technology became the primary licensee of data produced by abuse.ch. Here's an outline of why this partnership was conceived and what it hopes to achieve in the future.
In 2008, a sole researcher founded abuse.ch – a project committed to fighting abuse on the internet. There have been a handful of sponsors over the past 14 years, most recently Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH. However, aside from this, the founder has provided platforms for trusted third parties to share and consume threat intelligence data and helped highlight malicious internet behavior singled-handedly.
abuse.ch's popularity has grown significantly over time. Not only with the internet community who kindly share their intelligence data via abuse.ch’s various tools but also those who consume it. The initial platform launched was ZeuS Tracker, with ThreatFox and YARAify added more recently.
But one person can only do so much.
In the founder's words, "Maintaining a project in one's spare time that has expanded to such a degree has become untenable." They explained, "it has been necessary to appoint a licensee, not only to safeguard the project's current achievements but also build upon them and realize its full potential."
That licensee is Spamhaus Technology Ltd - an obvious choice for this partnership. There is a synergy and deep trust between these two entities. Both share the same desire to do what's right for the good of the internet, and both only focus on threat intelligence data. Spamhaus technology is a well-established global organization. Their experience, independence, and strong ethics set them apart from other providers.
With its existing infrastructure and reach, Spamhaus Technology is looking to secure abuse.ch's future while respecting its legacy as an open community driven initiative. Small independent organizations will be able to continue to access free data - Spamhaus Technology currently provides reputation data for free to small-scale users of IP and domain datasets. There is also a keen desire to honor the data-sharing aspect of abuse.ch, where security researchers share their intelligence on its various platforms. Meanwhile, Spamhaus will be looking to strengthen abuse.ch’s infrastructure, making it more robust to enable value-added services to be introduced for organizations already requesting access to a more commercial-grade subscription.
Simon Forster, CEO at Spamhaus Technology, commented, "This partnership is built on trust, respect, and a deep-seated passion for keeping the internet a safe place," adding, "we eagerly look to the future to see the possibilities this partnership will bring the internet community."
abuse.ch is providing community-driven threat intelligence on cyber threats. It maintains platforms that help internet service providers and network operators protect their infrastructure from malware. IT security researchers, vendors, and law enforcement agencies rely on data from abuse.ch to assist them in making the internet a safer place.
Spamhaus is the trusted authority on threat intelligence, uniquely placed in the industry because of our strong ethics, impartiality, and quality of actionable data. This data not only protects but also provides insight across networks and email worldwide. Our datasets are used by leading global technology companies, enterprise businesses, internet service providers, and hosting companies, among others.
Our IP and domain datasets, which are currently protecting over 3 billion mailboxes globally, are easily integrated into your current infrastructure to email streams, at the DNS level, and the network edge. This makes them a cost-effective, set-and-forget solution, allowing you to focus resources elsewhere.
For threat hunting and incident management, our passive DNS data and enhanced datasets allow your security teams to speed up and simplify security investigations.
With over two decades of experience, we are the industry leaders in threat intelligence data to protect and inform.