It has always struck me as strange there is no 2FA function on HackerNews along with no real delete function.
Also some of us have noticed for a while Hacker News is hosted differently than the rest of YCombinator. While YCombinator uses AWS, which makes sense, Hacker News uses a small San Diego firm called M5 Computer Security. They have commented on here from time to time.
M5 Computer Security, also known as Cloud 5 Hosting and a few other names, has popped up on other forums too. The IPs that are owned by them (at least according to WHOIS) wind up holding very strange other websites that aren't say hosting customers (like how to weld underwater, how to get a foreign visa, etc). Some of their name servers also hold data for websites that are definitely not supposed to be there, like the regional government sites of a foreign country (could be part of the Sea Turtle DNS attack we have thought [1]). Also for a security company they seem to have strangely out of date websites [2]. Copyright 2003?
A few weeks ago we wound up calling the FBI's Cyberstorm hotline after we saw something weird with a government in the United States that traced back to M5 and American Internet Services, LLC (they often appear alongside M5 in the hosting records). A week later I had someone from DHS interview me at length (they just showed up at the door) for about 30 minutes. They seemed to be around organized crime, but near the end of the conversation it was mentioned "well they also do a lot of Department of Defense stuff". Uh oh. This seems to be true as they mention it on one of their websites actually [4].
Hopefully someone a few months from now will pick up the case and find out / connect to one of the many other DNS mysteries out there.
[1] - https://blogs.cisco.com/security/talos/sea-turtle-keeps-on-s...
[2] - https://www.m5computersecurity.com/audit-private.php
[3] - www.htleng.com
[4] - https://www.m5hosting.com/about-us/data-centers/san-diego-li...
This seems like many words around "long-existing hosting company hosts all kinds of stuff", which is true about pretty much all of them.
Ok I could see this except for one thing I found out recently. "Long-existing hosting companies" have traded hands a bunch of times. Wild West Domains, Tucows, etc are like 6 different owners removed from the founders at this point. Sometimes the founders are kept on, but more as a figurehead who isn't supposed to ask detailed questions about what does and doesn't go on.
One of the better documented cases of hosting companies being a proxy for intelligence wars was the 2017 lawsuit Namecheap filed against eNom and Tucows. Long story short, Namecheap was supposed to be US intelligence, and eNom and Tucows were unknown/unnamed other intelligence group/agency [1].
[1] - https://domainnamewire.com/2017/09/01/namecheap-sues-enom-tu...
If it's "one of the better documented cases of hosting companies being a proxy for intelligence wars", can you provide any documentation of that? Your link describes a bog-standard spat between companies when one leaves a business relationship with the other.
It's also not a particular secret that hosting companies operate under multiple brands, buy others and at the same time new ones pop up regularly.
:)
HN has been said for a long time to be a front by various less credibly sourced claims.
Wow. What's going on here? Is this a front for an intelligence agency?
Their employee list is...strange. According to LinkedIn, all of their employees are also CEOs of their own other companies? One of their VPs has been both CEO of a lighting firm since 2014 or something, and also full time at M5 Hosting for a decade?
Likely Scenario: M5 is a front company. There just isn't enough care put into the websites / marketing, and not enough evidence on LinkedIn, to suggest this is a real business staffed by people who are working on stuff full time. And a hosting company definitely needs people full time...
Who on here was saying front company for intelligence agency? I imagine if that is the case this is already being picked up by any number of threat intelligence solutions like Shadow Dragon [1].
Also this group looks almost cliche Cold War intelligence agency. Their UK name servers appear to host the authoritative records for half a dozen amateur radio groups / HF repeater runners in the UK. Fascinating, could someone reach out to them? cleddau-amateur-radio-society.org.uk AND tenby-radio-repeater-group.org.uk AND taffvaleradio.club with DNS records served from ns1.mhosting.co.uk.
[1] - https://shadowdragon.io/oimonitor/