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    Your Name: Tobias Knecht 
               <tk@abusix.com>
    
    Your Organisation: abusix UG
    
    Policy Affected: NONE
    
    Date: 07.04.2010

    Proposal: Abuse Contact Information

     

1.  Incentive:

This is a proposal to introduce a reference to a specific and dedicated object 
which shall be used in future as the one and only place to publish abuse contact 
information within the AfriNIC region. The mentioned object can be referenced   
in the inetnum, inet6num and aut-num objects in the AfriNIC Whois Database.
It provides a more accurate and efficient way for abuse reports to reach the
correct network contact.


2.  Summary of current problem:

Network owners increasingly operate dedicated abuse
handling departments, distinct from the basic operations department. 

More and more network owners and other institutions are also starting
to exchange data about abusive behavior with each other, to more quickly allow networks
to identify internal abuse, external abuse, and other security problems.

Currently within the AfriNIC region, the growing amount of abuse reports
are sent to e-mail address specified in the e-mail field, as encouraged on the AfriNIC
website.[1] These addresses are used because the AfriNIC Whois Database currently has no
specialised contact object for abuse departments. Instead, all
abuse reports are sent to contact that is has broader responsibilities or different responsibilities.


3.  Situation in other RIRs:

APNIC:

    APNIC found consensus on introducing a mandatory IRT Object for all inet(6)nums and aut-nums 
    at APNIC 29 in Kuala Lumpur March 4th 2010.
    Further information about the APNIC policy proposal can be found at [2]
    
ARIN: 
 
    An abuse-POC exists for Organizational ID identifiers.[3]

LACNIC: 

    An abuse-c exists for aut-num, inetnum and inet6num objects.[4]
  
RIPE: 

    An optional IRT (Incident Response Team) object can be linked to
    inetnum and inet6num objects.[5]

   
4.  Details of the proposal:

It is proposed that the technical staff of AfriNIC finds a way to create 
a new or uses an already existing object, which implements the following 
qualities:

4.1 Can be referenced only once by inetnum, inet6num and aut-num

4.2 Contains 2 email address attributes:
4.2.1 "e-mail:" for personal communication
4.2.1 "abuse-mailbox:" for automatic report handling

4.3 Can be queried via
4.3.1 classic whois 
4.3.2 Abuse Finder Database [5]

4.4 AfriNIC publishes a Best Practice Paper and a Documentation, which 
    encourages all members to use the new object to publish abuse contact information.


5.  Advantages and disadvantages of the proposal:

5.1 Advantages

    - Networks will be able to supply their own, direct contact information for
      abuse departments. 

    - Abuse complaints will not be sent to the "wrong" contact any more. 
    
    - This permits greater administrative and operational flexibility, and 
      faster abuse handling will be possible.


5.2 Disadvantages

This object, like all other existing objects, will face the data accuracy
problem. This proposal aims to address the issue of a missing place for 
abuse contact information and will not improve data accuracy in the whois 
database. Nevertheless it is suggested to AfriNIC to offer a way to receive 
reports about not working or not accurate objects. But this is part of
another proposal.
      
6.  Effect on AfriNIC members:

There will be no immediate affect for AfriNIC members with existing
resource registrations already in the AfriNIC Whois Database. The 
only effect is the opportunity to publish a dedicated abuse contact 
object and profit by the advantages. 


7.  References:

[1] Finding contacts for an IP address 
    http://www.afrinic.net/Registration/spam.htm

[2] prop-079: Abuse contact information
    http://www.apnic.net/policy/proposals/prop-079

[3] Introduction to ARIN's Database
    https://www.arin.net/knowledge/database.html#abusepoc
    
[4] There is no formal documentation on abuse-c in inetnum and inet6num
    objects, but for documentation on the abuse-c in ASN records, see
    LACNIC Policy Manual (v1.3 - 07/11/2009) 
    http://lacnic.net/en/politicas/manual4.html
  
[5] RIPE Abuse Finder Database
    http://labs.ripe.net/Members/Paul_P_/content-abuse-finder

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