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Comment by mike_d | Hacker News Reader

There are already a handful of organizations that scan the entire internet and feed the data to western governments.

You can poke around at https://viz.greynoise.io/ to see who is doing what.

> feed the data to western governments

It is ironic that the very link [1] you provided proves you wrong. The top 5 countries of origin doing IP scanning in the last seven days are China (120k), India (67k), US (52), Iran (44k), and Russia (27k).

- [1] https://viz.greynoise.io/query/?gnql=last_seen%3A7d

That doesn’t mean they’re wrong: it just says that other people scan the internet, too, which nobody would argue.

Right, also the source IP of a port scan doesn't say anything about who has initiated that scan. If I were a state actor, I'd do my port scanning from machines in a different jurisdiction for sure.

Totally - this is like thinking you’ll catch FSB agents by looking for Russian passports.

You probably can

Actual GRU agents have been identified by a receipt for taxi from GRU hq to Sheremetievo airport

No, you can't. They have a long, well-established history of concealing their undercover agents. The fact that this is not perfect doesn't mean that they don't make the effort, or that you're doing anything other than fooling yourself if you think that all traffic by a national intelligence agency comes from the netblocks assigned to those countries.

You’d think, but everything is worse in Russia. Several agents have been revealed because they were issued sequential passport numbers.

https://mobile.twitter.com/bellingcat/status/151894316662756...

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2022/08/25/socialite-widow-j...

I see your point. But then how is the accusation 'west scans internet' connected to 'see this map of countries of origin'? Because I thought he would back up this claim with this source/second paragraph.

If other people (and arguably other govt's) are scanning too, then saying 'west scans internet' seems somewhat superficial. Not that I deny western state actors scanning the internet, its just that everybody does it.

Meh, the context was a western gov scanning the internet.

We tend to hold them to a higher standard than the ones who much more shamelessly operate pseudo-blackhat hacking teams. The west at least tries to maintain a sheen of legality. Or morality. Or whatever.

Do you think the Chinese government tells their citizens that they are shamelessly "operating pseudo-blackhat hacking teams"? No, of course not, just like yout Government doesn't tell you that either. The only reason you think the West is the only trying to maintain "a sheen of legality" is that their voice is the only one you're listening to.

Uhh I don't live in a country with a great firewall. The intel agencies get criticized very heavily in my information bubble. The shady stuff the NSA does is pretty well known. It's in movies all the time too, so I'm sure the mainstream even understands that.

And yet despite all the messed up stuff they do every day they still get held to a higher standard.

The accusation was never made that the west scans the internet. "organizations that scan the entire internet and feed the data to western governments." As an analogy, the west buys iPhones, but it doesn't necessarily manufacture them.

It could well be easier to run such a scanning company from the mentioned countries than in many european ones where it's illegal or a gray area.

(But there are also other reasons your conclusion is wrong I think)

Yeah, could be. But still that does not support the argument of "feed the data to western governments".

When you say: "Look, the people from village A north are stealing apples from the city orchard. Here is a list of apple thieves and the direction (N,E,S,W) from which they came." And this list shows that it appears to be majorly the directions E,S,W (so not directly from village A). Then how is this an argument?

It just shows that everybody steals apples, making the accusation "villagers of A are to blame" superficial. That's the point it tried to make.

> But there are also other reasons your conclusion is wrong I think

I would be interested on why my conclusion is wrong. At best, one could draw nothing from the data as it does not show any relation to state actors. And if this conclusion is drawn, then why did `mike_d` blame the western state actors in the first place?

Think for a second about this: Did you think that the link `mike_d` provided supported the argument "... feed the data to western governments" with the emphasis on 'western'?

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