14 DAY TRIAL // After the infamous hosting company Intercage (Atrivo) was dropped by all of its ISPs due to increasing pressure from security groups and researchers that were accusing the company for housing extensive criminal activity, the UnitedLayer transit provider stepped up to the challenge of providing them with uplink.
As we recently wrote, Intercage has been the subject of many security reports and media articles that were connecting the company with cybercriminal groups. Due to the increasing bad publicity being generated and the risk of getting their IP ranges added to various blacklists, the three ISPs, Global Crossing, WVFiber and Bandcon, that were routing traffic for the San Francisco company chose to terminate their contracts.
At the last minute, Pacific Internet Exchange (PIE), an ISP owned by a friend of Intercage's president Emil Kacperski, stepped in and saved the company from remaining totally separated from the Internet. This move didn't last long, because PIE changed its mind after only a few days following over 1,000 of their IPs being blacklisted by Spamhaus and many of their customers threatening to leave. With PIE depeering them, Intercage's servers were literally inexistent online, which meant huge problems for the company, its partners and its customers.
Intercage CEO and president Emil Kacperski vowed that he would get a new provider quickly and it looks like he delivered on that promise by finding a solution after only 72 hours. San Francisco based managed collocation company UnitedLayer, which also has offices in Los Angeles, San Jose, Ashburn and New York, took on the challenge of associating themselves with the bad rep of the hosting company and gave them a helping hand, but at a great cost to Intercage.
In order to secure this deal, Intercage dropped one of their biggest clients, Web hosting Estonian company Esthost. This was necessary, as Esthost was considered to be the biggest source of phishing, scamming, spamming and malware-spreading websites housed under Intercage's umbrella. While this might be true, according to Emil Kacperski, Esthost also represented a vital client responsible for 25% to 50% of Intercages's revenue.
After disconnecting the last of the Esthost servers from their network, the Intercage owner noted that "unfortunately, they were a big client”. He added that “we put a lot of eggs in one basket, which I wish of course I did not do". The company will also have to set up a ticket-based abuse reporting system like most hosting companies have, which is meant to replace their current e-mail based system deemed inefficient.
Obviously, this move did not fall well with security groups that were still celebrating the death of what they considered to be the biggest hub of cybercriminal activity in the US. Because of the changes, the contract termination with Esthost in particular, they are willing to give Intercage another chance and not put pressure on UnitedLayer as they did with PIE. At the same time, this is aimed at showing that they are not the angry virtual lynch mob some people compared them with. They do warn Intercage, however, that they will be watching closely and will not hesitate to move against them if the company's shady practices continue. “We'll be watching them very carefully, I can assure you," noted Spamhaus' Richard Cox.
UnitedLayer COO, Richard Donaldson, confirmed that what prompted their decision to do business with Intercage was the end of its relationship with Esthost. "We have been assured by Emil and Intercage that the customer in question that caused this firestorm has been removed," he noted, but added that “we have said very unequivocally to Emil that when and if factual evidence is provided to us that puts him in violation of our AUP (acceptable use policy)... then we will terminate them like we would any other client".
