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McColo Briefly Returns, Hands Off Botnet Control
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Nov 18, 2008 06:43 PM
from the should-have-used-a-stake-through-the-heart dept.
from the should-have-used-a-stake-through-the-heart dept.
A week ago we discussed the takedown of McColo (and the morality of that action). McColo was reportedly the source of anywhere from 50% to 75% of the world's spam. On Saturday the malware network briefly returned to life in order to hand over command and control channels to a Russian network. "The rogue network provider regained connectivity for about 12 hours on Saturday by making use of a backup arrangement it had with Swedish internet service provider TeliaSonera. During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia, according to ... Trend Micro. The brief resurrection allowed miscreants who rely on McColo to update a portion of the massive botnets they use to push spam and malware. Researchers from FireEye saw PCs infected by the Rustock botnet being updated so they'd report to a new server located at abilena.podolsk-mo.ru for instructions. That means the sharp drop in spam levels reported immediately after McColo's demise isn't likely to last."
Related Stories
[+]
Washington Post Blog Shuts Down 75% of Online Spam 335 comments
ESCquire writes "Apparently, the Washington Post Blog 'Security Fix' managed to shut down McColo, a US-based hosting provider facilitating more than 75 percent of global spam. " Now how long before the void is filled by another ISP?
[+]
McColo Takedown, Vigilantes Or Neighborhood Watch? 194 comments
CWmike writes "Few tears were shed when alleged spam and malware purveyor McColo was suddenly taken offline last Tuesday by its upstream service providers. But behind the scenes of the McColo case and another recent takedown of Intercage, a ferocious struggle is taking place between the purveyors of Web-based malware and loosely aligned but highly committed groups of security researchers who are out to neutralize them. Backers claim that the effort to shut down miscreant ISPs is needed because of the inability of law enforcement agencies to deal with a problem that is global in nature. But some question whether there is a hint of vigilantism behind the takedowns — even as they acknowledge that there may not be any other viable options for dealing with the problem at this point."
[+]
Massive Botnet Returns From the Dead To Spam On 205 comments
CWmike writes "Gregg Keizer reports that the big spam-spewing Srizbi botnet, shut down two weeks ago when McColo was shuttered, has been resurrected and is again under the control of criminals, security researchers said today. As of late Tuesday, infected PCs were able to successfully reconnect with new command-and-control servers, which are now based in Estonia, said Fengmin Gong, chief security content officer at FireEye. The comeback confirms what researchers noted last week, that Srizbi had a fallback strategy. So, in the end, that strategy paid off for the criminals who control the botnet."
[+]
Estonian ISP Shuts Srizbi Back Down, For Now 237 comments
wiedzmin writes "In response to the recent resurrection of the Srizbi botnet, an Estonian ISP has shut down the hosting company that was housing its new control servers. Starline Web Services, based in Estonia's capital Tallinn, had become the new home for the Srizbi botnet control center after the McColo hosting company (which was taken down earlier this month) has briefly come back to life last week, allowing the botnet to hand-off control to the Estonian network. After Estonia's biggest ISP Linxtelecom demanded that Starline Web Service be taken offline, the newly acquired Srizbi control servers went down with it. However, as the rootkit is armed with an algorithm that periodically generates new domain names where the malware then looks for new instructions, it is only a matter of time before a new set of control servers is created and used to manipulate one of the biggest spam botnets in the world."
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In Soviet Russia (Score:3, Funny)
Sesame seed bun is on two all spam patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions.
Uncongested Relief! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I could have one pointed out and slap them up side the head
While we're having wild fantasies, I wish I had a time machine to go slap the idealistic hippies who originally designed the fledgeling network with practically no verification or security ON PURPOSE.
Re:Uncongested Relief! (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of wild fantasies about idealist notions... Ever wanted to be paid for work that wasn't asked for or justified at the time?
Parent
Alas... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is an example of the old saying "The Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it".
Unfortunately, this is happening for the bad guys as well as us.
Re:Alas... (Score:5, Funny)
The Internet could route around McColo too, if say, it were burned to the ground in the middle of the night. Or barring that, some 'hard pipe-hittin' thugs' somehow gained access to the building and went on a smashing spree. Anyone want to set up a donation box to hire somee thugs?
After all, what's this doing for us? It sounds almost like..well..treason! A foreign power is accessing systems in the United States and is using those systems to infect/enslave other systems. I wouldn't shed a tear if a black ops detachment traced the stuff back to its source and C4ed the offending equipment/operators in Russia or wherever they're coming from.
Parent
This just in! (Score:5, Funny)
this is great news (Score:4, Funny)
My penis thanks them, my very very large penis which is located in a recently refinanced home, that is.
Now as soon as my good friend MR AUSTINE OWOH is able to complete the transfer of my long lost uncle's estate from probate in Nigeria to my onshore checking account, I will be perfect, perfect with a very very large penis, that is.
Final Solution: (Score:4, Insightful)
Russian C&C is Actually Less Desirable (Score:5, Insightful)
C&C server blocked by ISPs? (Score:4, Informative)
It appears that the new C&C server listed in the article, 62.176.17.200, has been blackholed by my ISP's routers. I'm on a Qwest "business/office" ADSL line. Any similar reports from other ISP's?
Or is it actually down?
If most American ISPs are blocking it, Rustock is dead, or at least in a coma. TFA implied that the IP address was being distributed to the bot, not the domain name.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dies for me at my ISP's border router; I've never seen a traceroute die so fast. Only 2 hops before it goes dead. It makes me think that the global BGP tables are blackholing the subnet.
I checked a bunch of BGP looking glasses and they all report "Network not in table", as in there are no global routes for that IP address.
--Quentin
McColo isn't a real ISP (Score:4, Informative)
McColo doesn't seem to have been a real ISP. Or even a real company. They don't have a valid corporate registration in California or New Jersey. They were apparently a front for the spam operation, buying services from Hurricane Electric.
Their web site was designed by Vane [www.vane.ru], in Russia. They still have some connection to McColo. Go to the Vane site (preferably not using IE on Windows) and look at the icons of the various companies with which they are affiliated. Go to the row of vertical bars at the center right, second row. Mouse over the blank area just above the bars. You'll get some Cyrillic with "McColo" in Latin text. Click on the hidden link. This will take you to an animation which brings up an image of the McColo site. Items within that animation are clickable. A bit of work will get you to the number of McColo's "sales manager". But there's no way to order hosting on line; they were never really selling ordinary hosting services.
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
It's not the data, it's the cooperation. (Score:5, Interesting)
This pretty much shows how certain ISP's help spammers. Particularly since they did not IMMEDIATELY bring up their backup link. Instead they waited until the weekend.
Parent
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:5, Insightful)
Er, you can't communicate with a botnet with a harddrive, you know.
Parent
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:4, Insightful)
During that time, McColo was observed pushing as much as 15MB of data per second to servers located in Russia
The massive amounts of data they were talking about were being pushed to other servers, so they could have done that work with a hard drive. However, it also says that the botnet was updated. Assuming that the botnet couldn't have been updated from those same russian servers, they could have done any number of things, including any number of regular internet connections to buildings nearby or satellite/cellular internet service.
I doubt, however, that the data center was a single point of failure for them. The idea that the malware builders can build massive botnets with distributed architecture that elude understanding by security researchers, but they can't figure out how to make it so that they can run it from a backup data center, seems unlikely to me.
Parent
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:4, Funny)
Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Sadly, it's true :(
Parent
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently TeliaSonera shut down the link as soon as they realised what was happening - the contract was through a proxy company.
See the Register [theregister.co.uk] article for more details.
So we can't really blame TeliaSonera.
Why the spamming bastards didn't just courier a hard drive to Russia instead is a mystery, though.
Parent
Re:Let's turn TeliaSonera into a smoking crater ne (Score:5, Interesting)
The article said they had to update the command & control data for the botnets. The 'nets won't let just any computer control them, and this Russian server probably wasn't on the master list, so they needed to get back online with their old DNS hostname first.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's say you rent some space anf open a small convenience store. You work hard and make a modest living. Then your landlord rents out the shop next door to a crack dealer who's thriving business attracts a swarm of lowlifes who destroy the neighborhood. Are you going to be upset with the neighborhood watch when they make a fuss, or are you going to be upset with your landlord?
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Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
And if the police do nothing?
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Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to prevent them from doing this every few months and leaving a trail of dead service providers in the wake of our new definition of "justice" as the botnet owners simply hop from one provider to the next?
That's simple - ISPs that value their continued existence will enforce their anti-spam/botnet policies rather than look the other way and take money from anyone who can pay. This isn't vigilantism, it's the upstream ISP dropping connectivity for contract violations when informed of the situation at one of their downstreams.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh
Way to ignore the obvious facts here.
The ISP had the option of blocking off the spammers.
They did not. Eventually, ISP who do not stop spam will be disconnected. The ISP that supported this botnet SHOULD be a shambles, they became that when they decided not to stop their clients spamming.
What will prevent them from going to new ISP is that ISP probably dont like being put out of business completely.
This should be a salutory lesson for the next ISP that is told they are sending spam.
I see no ethical issues, unless you are a spammer.
But I suspect troll is closer to the mark.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Interesting)
The facts do not support the conclusions here! Fundamentally, the argument that people keep siding with is "it's okay to nuke an ISP that harbors spammers." This argument is made on emotion -- the frustration we all share about receiving spam and it's negative impact. Those emotions don't consider the unintended consequences, which is that innocent people can be harmed when this course of action is taken. The legal system in this country is heavily slanted towards keeping the innocents out of the line of fire at whatever cost; An ethical principle I happen to agree with.
The ISPs need to be held legally accountable for harboring spammers, which means using legal methods to make the cost of doing so high enough that they comply. By going through the backdoor and shutting off their connections, this weakens the entire market and the infrastructure of the internet at large -- because we are implying then that our personal ethics are more important than our legal obligations. What we're saying here is that agents in the market of providing internet services are free to excercise their own judgement -- which also means now they are liable for things like copyright infringement, or people passing child porn through their network, etc. It opens the door to accusations of selective enforcement, discrimination, and worse.
And calling me a troll, or saying that I support spammers, or that I am a spammer... Is a cheap way of ducking an uncomfortable truth.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the words of Wikipedia, cite please. Because you're talking out of your ass.
You then claim that people are legally obligated to report ISPs to their upstream providers. I'm laughing, now.
Again, cite please.
It is also not anyone but McColo and their immediate upstream provider and the civil court system to mediate contract disputes, not anyone else. In fact, there's a concept you might want to learn about, "tortious interference", relating to third parties interfering in contracts between a first and second party.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, once you give the government jurisdiction to decide who can and cannot use the Internet, they will use that power to further their own interests rather than yours.
No politician will ever vote to decrease his own power.
Parent
So what's YOUR solution? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just let the spammers, malware pushers, and con artists clog up the net?
The real question is, who's protecting these scumbags and why? Why has it taken so long to do anything about them?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As long as people keep opting-in to running botnet nodes, we'll have this problem. Don't like it? Stop participating in the botnet.
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
1. I don't have a solution, I'm just considering the ethical aspect.
What is unethical about pointing out MASSIVE violation of terms of service by an ISP to their provider? The ISP has a duty to obey the terms they agreed to, and if it can't or won't it gets cut off. Just like you or I would get cut off by our upstream for violating whatever agreement we may have in place.
2. I'd rather deal with spam, malware, and con artists clogging the internet than vigilantes blowing holes in it.
Considering the sheer cost of cleaning up this bullshit, I doubt many share the same opinion. And the intenet was designed to route around holes in it. Theoretically at least.
3. As to who's protecting them -- it's not a question of who but what. In this case, economics.
No. There are definately quite a few "who"s in this mix. Like the greedy bastards who look the other way while their customers commit felonies. They are accessories to the crimes of their clients if they don't cut them off for their criminal bullshit.
4. It has taken this long because until now people were restrained by ethical considerations prevalent within the community. However, a certain moral flexibility seems to be developing now out of frustration. This can only end badly.
Are you kidding? People have been black-holed for decades on the internet for stuff like this.
WHERE IS THE ETHICAL ISSUE WITH TELLING A PROVIDER THAT THEIR CLIENTS ARE IN GROSS VIOLATION OF THEIR ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY????
Or worse.
Either they need to act on it when its pointed out or they will find themselves having to screen their traffic for content because of some cockamamy law passed because they were KNOWINGLY looking the other way while the sold space to kiddy-porn traders after numerous people pointed it out.
Parent
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Canter and Siegel were kicked off their ISPs in decently short order 14 years ago (1994) after starting to spam. See:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Canter_and_siegel
Anyone familiar with the history of spamfighting will be able to point to numerous examples every year since then, of escalating size and complexity.
Vigilantism is acting extrajudicially AND illegally as a community group to right a wrong or combat a criminal. It's an inappropriate model here - the response was entirely legal. It was done by people who, contrary to your assertion, were openly identified and stood and stand by their information.
If people were assassinating botnet operators or burning McColo datacenters down, THAT would be vigilantism. This is just community response.
Parent
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem comes when the upstream provider violated their contract with the customers
They haven't violated their contract to their customers, they violated their contract with thier upstream provider. Completely different things.
that may have been using the service in accordance with the TOS but lost their service due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can sympathize but if you want to be a customer of an ISP that behaves so poorly that its own providers tell it to go to hell than I can't have much sympathy. You do know that the offenders are limiting YOUR bandwidth too right?
Which, if you want to split hairs, is principally the fault of the provider and possibly to a lesser extent the person reporting the problem because they provided false information. I say possibly because I don't know what information was provided.
No, the fault is ENTIRELY that of the ISP failing to police its customers' behaviour. The upstream provider has ZERO blame for enforcing its terms of service, and the reporting party doesn't either. Everything done was entirely legal.
Reporting party: "Hey I've notice a crapton of SPAM, viruses and malware coming from your IP block"
Upstream provider: "Holy Crap! Yeah that is way outside acceptable use"
Upstream cuts of the offender for violating their agreement.
What's wrong with that?
I am glad, then, that the decision is not theirs to make. Besides, most people think they're above average drivers too...
Actually the decision IS mine to make in places where I manage the network. I have numerous blacklisted IP blocks of known hostile networks and SPAM/malware sites. I protect my clients at the level I am governing. Higher up the chain, other net admins will be doing the same whenever an ISP doesn't smack down its malicious users.
Incidently, infecting systems with botnet crap is a felony. Has been for years.
You can't say they shouldn't help RIAA enforce their copyright by booting you off your connection for P2P, then turn around and say they should police people for spam. They're common carriers; It means they're not responsible, nor should they be. If we start down this road, the internet as we know it ends.
1) I never mentioned P2P or any of that crap but if I violate my ISP's terms of use they are free to cut me off
2) ISPs are NOT common carriers, educate yourself
3) They ARE responsible insofar as their provider's acceptible use policy is concerned. Violate it and get cut off.
Citation needed.
Wow, how long HAVE you been on the internet anyway?
Look, the solution here is laws not vigilantism...
Law: Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (among others) makes infecting systems to be part of a botnet a felony. Also things like the CAN-SPAM Act have criminalized SPAM. There are laws, but getting anyone caught and prosecuted when the are sitting in the middle of the Ukraine is kindof difficult.
Because the simple truth is no matter how good you are sooner or later you're going to fuck it up.
Not if all you are doing is telling a provider to "look over there" and they check it out and only act on it if what you say true.
The law ensures that when this happens, there's recourse. A vigilante will just disappear into the night with the words "I'm sorry" on his/her lips. And not only that, but the entire tone of your response rather underscores the need to get emotion out of this situation and the justice system is far better suited to this than your "Let's get a posse together and ride" solution.
The law does no such thing when the perpetrators are outside its jurisdiction. And there are no vigilantes as everything was done within the bounds of the law. Your ignorance is astounding. The tone of my respons
Parent
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, the solution here is laws not vigilantism... Because the simple truth is no matter how good you are sooner or later you're going to fuck it up. The law ensures that when this happens, there's recourse. A vigilante will just disappear into the night with the words "I'm sorry" on his/her lips.
The problem is that you're confusing this with vigilantism. This wasn't a single vigilante passing judgment and then disappearing in to the night. These were individuals reporting the crime to the upstream host. The upstream host then took that evidence, reviewed it, and acted on it using a very legal mechanism - their contract with the ISP. Law is being upheld.
Parent
Re:So what's YOUR solution? (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, its my PROFESSIONAL duty. Good luck suing me for pointing out that you are committing a felony to your provider. I have the feds computer crimes department on speed-dial.
If a shit-ton of malicious crap and SPAM/malware are coming into MY client's network (causing ME and MY CLIENTS a material loss), or if my client's systems have been infected with a botnet controlled from YOUR IP space(a felony), it is your responsibility to address that when I tell you about it. If you don't I'll talk to YOUR provider. Or would you rather I call the FBI and tell them you're systematically attacking my client?
I don't even have to be involved actually, I can just tell MY client's providers (some of which are backbone providers) what I see coming from YOUR network and they have entire departments to deal with that type of shit. So you can fight Level 3 and Verizon for all I care. Your customers are attacking their customers, they can cut you off just as easily.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have "malware" on your computer, your private data is already being exposed. It could just as well be a bot net operator whose combing through your data. Who'd you rather have digging through your infected computer?
Besides, the guys used possibly ill-gotten information that was true to convince the upstream provider to shut down the ISP. The experts didn't run into the data center, pulling plugs in a rage...though that might make a neat comic book. In truth, you should blame the upstream providers. Seriously, this isn't Governments running around meting out justice. This is companies listening to private organizations.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you smoking? Or rather, are you someone arguing a point without a clue.
Whether they had any legit customers is suspect. If they did, I'm sure they would have come to light very quickly.
No, your ISP will be notified about spam originating from its networks and they'll either deal with the user who is undoubtedly violating their TOS or the ISP's IP range will be entered into mail blackhole lists. Nothing new there.
Unlikely, and sadly you probably won't get punted off the net like you should. Instead, your computer will continue to be abused for the purposes of these criminals.
Your efforts to compare this to the drug war are completely irrational, as their causes and symptoms are wildly different. On top of that, there was no government involvement here.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, yes you did epic fail.
"legitimate commercial enterprise"
If you are so keen on this "enterprise", post your email address and we will see how you feel about getting a thousand spam emails a day.
Frankly, it is time that Russia was pulled into line on this matter. An international incident might be just the thing to do this.
If you allow your PC to be infected by trojans, your privacy just went out the door anyway. Why would you care if researchers looked at your stuff when criminals already can????
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, frankly, yes. An ISP that turns a blind eye to such activities as accused, is just as good as helping the bad guys. And guess what... this is a war where almost anyone is willing to take casualties to end it. Now the innocent bystanders know they were dealing with shit for an ISP and have a big sign in front of their face to move to someone more reputable. It is a win for everyone, except the nefarious spammers/botnet operators that were put out by it. There is no sympathy for these folks.
Parent
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, are we talking about the same "legitimate commercial enterprise" mentioned in this story, the one that apparently came back from the dead just long enough to pass off control of a botnet? If anything, this followup story proves that McColo's death wasn't just justified, it was long overdue.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how all those security researchers feel after destroying a legitimate commercial enterprise and affecting a lot of people who weren't spammers.
RTFA. They reported TOS violations to upstream providers. It's not like they firebombed the data center. Furthermore, the presence of legitimate clients isn't that great a defense - lots of criminal enterprises have "fronts" that do legit business to mask the illegal activities.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow. And here I was going to say that this latest development (if the previous ones weren't enough) seemed to be rock-solid evidence that the people who run McColo knew exactly what they were hosting, and should go to prison for a long, long time.
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's why your comparison doesn't make any sense. Drugs are a demand driven problem; attacking supply centers simply leads to more supply popping up. Spam is a supply driven problem; attacking supply centers leads to less spam.
If you really think that ISPs will continue to operate with gray customers, I guess you might think this is wack-a-mole, but ISPs have plenty of legitimate business and will have no problem ceasing doing business with spammers. This ISP didn't do that and learned a hard lesson. They were not a good-actor here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Drugs are a demand driven problem; attacking supply centers simply leads to more supply popping up.
But if there wasn't a supply in the first place, there wouldn't be a demand problem... or so goes the logic. Attacking supply centers leads to higher costs as supply has diminished. Because the price is now higher, there's now more incentive for an agent to enter the market who can produce at a lower price. There's a few extra steps in this that make calling it either a supply or a demand problem a meanin
Re:Epic Fail. (Score:5, Insightful)
if spam wasn't profitable nobody would be doing it
Not necessarily. Spam may not be profitable, spamming may be. If you convince someone to pay you to spam for them, whether or not the spam itself generates any profit, you hustled them out of the money.
Parent
Reinventing government? (Score:3, Insightful)
In order to govern the net (and to coin another useless buzzword) we need Government 2.0.
Reinventing government? Let me guess...
1) Without that pesky Bill of Rights.
2) Online (where malware authors can take it over).
Thanks but no thanks.
Re:The solution is anarchy (Score:4, Informative)
Do you remember just a few years ago the "MS Blaster" fiasco?
Do you remember "Welchia" I think it was called. It was just that it removed Blaster and then tried to spread itself the same way. In the end Welchia was a troublesome for network operators as "MS Blaster" itself. It was terrible.
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Re:How to stop internet crime (Score:4)
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Re:Which Federal Wirefraud Law Did McColo Just Bre (Score:4, Interesting)
I realize that there are others who are already more than knowledgeable about McColo. I just wanted to add an observation from a look at McColo's "about" page archived on the wayback machine: the site designer links back to a Russian domain, and the corporate address is a drop box in Delaware. It wouldn't surprise me if the only US-based "employees" were a handful of independent contractors swapping equipment out at the San Jose data center.
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Re:Can they hear me now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, dont do this.
These servers were plugged off on early monday (local moscow time), as soon we got contact with podolsk-mo. The networks of bad guys were:
62.176.16.0/22 (they got from local ISP)
91.200.144.0/22 (client's network)
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