Abuse complaint

[Matthew McCabe]

Hey-

Last night, Time Warner Cable temporarily disabled my account due to an 
alleged attack coming from my IP address and targeting a server in 
Europe (Denmark I believe).  Below is the e-mail I sent them to respond 
to the complaint.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond to these complaints?  
Is IP filtering the best (or only) option for addressing TWC's issues?

Thanks for your help,
Matt


Dear Time Warner Cable,

Last night I was notified that my cable modem Internet service had been 
temporarily disabled due to an abuse complaint.  I called and left a 
message on your abuse telephone number last night and received a call 
today from one of your representatives.  She explained that an attack on 
a server in Europe had been launched from my IP address.  I explained to 
your representative that I am running a Tor relay node which someone may 
have used to launch an attack.

Here is a description of what Tor is (from torproject.org):
"Tor is network software that helps users to enhance their privacy, 
security, and safety online. It does not host or make available any 
content. Rather, it is part of a network of nodes on the Internet that 
simply pass packets among themselves before sending them to their 
destinations, just as any Internet host does. The difference is that Tor 
tunnels the connections such that no hop can learn both the source and 
destination of the packets, giving users protection from nefarious 
snooping on network traffic. Tor protects users against hazards such as 
harassment, spam, and identity theft. In fact, initial development of 
Tor, including deployment of a public-use Tor network, was a project of 
the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, with funding from ONR and DARPA. 
(For more on Tor, see https://www.torproject.org/.)"

To be clear, this attack was not launched from any computer that I own 
and instead may have come from the inappropriate use of the Tor 
network.  I explained to your representative that if she would forward 
me the abuse complaint, I would configure Tor so that this server would 
not be accessible from my Tor relay.  Specifically, I will deny access 
to the server that was attacked from my Tor relay using IP address 
filtering.  Thus, I need the IP address of the server in question before 
I will be able to setup this policy.

If you receive any new abuse complaints for my account, please e-mail or 
call me before disabling my Internet connection.  If you give me 
specific information about the abuse complaint, I will do my best to 
immediately address the issue.

Here is my contact information:
[removed]

Thank you,
Matthew McCabe