Identification of IP Addresses Using Fraudulent Geolocation Data
BENG INDIVIDUAL PROJECT IMPERIAL COLLEGE LONDON DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING Identification of IP addresses using fraudulent geolocation data Supervisor: Dr. Sergio Maffeis Author: James Williams Second Marker: Mr. Dominik Harz June 15, 2020 Abstract IP geolocation information is used all over the internet, but is easily faked. A number of differ- ent internet organisations do this – from bulletproof hosting providers attempting to conceal the location of their servers, to VPN providers looking to sell services in countries they don’t have a presence in. Servers using fraudulent IP geolocation in this way may also be more likely to be hosting fraudulent content, making IP geolocation fraud important to detect in the context of in- ternet fraud prevention. In this project, a system has been developed for detecting this kind of IP geolocation fraud. The system developed in this report uses measurements from a global network of measurement servers – an array of 8 servers in 7 different countries managed by Netcraft, and over 10,000 servers in 176 countries through the RIPE Atlas API. Using this system we have analysed the prevalence of geolocation fraud in address space spanning over 4 million IPs, which is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest study of its kind conducted. Despite focusing on only a small part of the IPv4 address space, our analysis has revealed incorrect geolocation being used by over 62,000 internet hosts, targeting 225 out of the 249 possible country codes. In terms of address space, we have discovered incorrect geolocation being used by IP address blocks cumulatively spanning over 2.1 million IPs.
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