[Eril-l] Sci-Hub users asking us to restore their access!

Tue Oct 4 12:19:45 PDT 2016

That's a good point about demonstrating good faith in licensing terms.

I've had a further thought, after having learned from Paul about some of
the country-specific options, that what we could really use in ezproxy is
the ability not to block an entire country across the board, but perhaps
for a given list of countries, require an additional step, and I'm thinking
CAPTCHA here rather than personalized second authentication.

In this situation at least, it's pretty clear that software is running
through our proxy server, not a human being, so a CAPTCHA step might stop
it. I know CAPTCHAs are engaged in an escalating war of technologies, and
maybe the Sci-Hub hackers would know all of the tricks to beat them, but it
might be worth trying.  I don't think it would be a horrible thing to do to
our researchers over in Russia, China, etc. to have to answer a CAPTCHA
before establishing a proxy cookie - given all the press about
international hacking, I'd think they'd understand the need for it quite
well.

So how does one go about getting OCLC to add new security features to
Ezproxy?

Melissa

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 4:10 PM, Robert Heaton <robert.heaton at usu.edu> wrote:

> Thank you, Paul, for giving the great technical details.
>
>
>
> Melissa, we have not had this particular situation, but if I did, I would
> certainly include the what-you’re-doing-is-illegal messaging in my response
> to the users. While the language is different in each case, a great many of
> our license agreements require at least a good-faith effort to stop
> activities that are in breach of the license terms once we have become
> aware of them. Since we don’t know which vendors’ content they are
> accessing (then again, I suppose the proxy logs might clue you in), we may
> not be liable for not contacting the vendors when we learned of the breach.
> But I would hate for a vendor to think that I didn’t do my due diligence
> when the question originally came to me.
>
>
>
> Robert Heaton
> Interim Head of Collection Development
> Utah State University Libraries
> robert.heaton at usu.edu
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org] *On Behalf Of *Butler,
> Paul
> *Sent:* Monday, October 03, 2016 2:08 PM
> *To:* Melissa Belvadi <mbelvadi at upei.ca>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Eril-l] Sci-Hub users asking us to restore their access!
>
>
>
> Hi Melissa,
>
>
>
> I must say this is the first time I have heard users from Sci-Hub reaching
> out to a library to request access be restored. That is comical!
>
>
>
> A polite educational email seems reasonable, but likely won’t do much to
> dissuade them – they just want access to the content by any means.
>
>
>
> Some techniques that can be used to secure EZProxy, that depend on you and
> your institution’s ability/comfort to tweak EZProxy...
>
>
>
> Tracking down and reporting the compromised user account to campus IT is
> the first step. While campus IT does their work I generally block the user
> account from EZProxy and terminate all active sessions.
>
>
>
> I maintain a list of referrers that I block from EZProxy. If you haven’t
> done that I would suggest it as another useful step. You can find it here:
> https://github.com/prbutler/EZProxy_IP_Blacklist/blob/
> master/EZProxy_IfReferer_Blacklist.txt
>
>
>
> You can also block access by country, if you are seeing trends and know a
> legitimate user would not come from a specific country. This is a good
> temporary measure. ALL access from a specific country can be blocked by
> adding the following to the top of config.txt. Country codes are the same
> as those in the audit logs.
>
>
>
> ::Common
>
> IfCountry US; Stop
>
> IfCountry BR; Audit Blocking BR; Deny denied.htm
>
> IfCountry CN; Audit Blocking CN; Deny denied.htm
>
> IfCountry IR; Audit Blocking IR; Deny denied.htm
>
> /Common
>
>
>
> Using Option BlockCountryChange can also help, see the documentation here:
> https://www.oclc.org/support/services/ezproxy/documentation/cfg/option-
> blockcountrychange.en.html
>
>
>
> Tweaking UsageLimit seems reasonable, it is always a balancing act,
> contact me off list if you would like to know what we use, or have any
> other questions.
>
>
>
> Finally, you can always block access by IP. I maintain the EZProxy IP
> Blacklist, which is a community supported effort to share IP addresses that
> have been used for fraudulent activity. See here:
> https://github.com/prbutler/EZProxy_IP_Blacklist. And if you are willing
> to share the IP addresses used for the fraudulent activity please send them
> my way and I can add them to the blacklist.
>
>
>
> With all of this, be sure to check your messages.txt file after you
> restart EZProxy to make sure nothing has broken.
>
>
>
> *Caveat emptor! *
>
>
>
> Cheers, Paul
>
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> Paul R Butler, mlis
>
> Library Technologies Support Analyst
>
> Library Information Technology Services (L.I.T.S)
>
> Ball State University <http://bsu.edu>
>
> Muncie, IN  47306
>
> P: 765.285.8032
>
> E: prbutler at bsu.edu
>
>
>
> University Libraries*...a destination for research, learning, and friends*
>
>
>
> The University Libraries provide services that support student pursuits
> for academic success and faculty endeavors for knowledge creation and
> classroom instruction.
>
>
>
> *From:* Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org
> <eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org>] *On Behalf Of *Melissa Belvadi
> *Sent:* Monday, October 03, 2016 12:41 PM
> *To:* eril-l at lists.eril-l.org
> *Subject:* [Eril-l] Sci-Hub users asking us to restore their access!
>
>
>
> We've recently gotten a spate of emails sent to our ezproxy admin address
> from various users around the world, all basically complaining that we've
> somehow blocked their use of Sci-Hub (!) and asking us to restore their
> access.  One of them even sent a screenshot so we know what they're seeing
> is the "deny.htm" file in ezproxy.
>
>
>
> They are all very polite and seem to think they are entitled to access, as
> if they have no idea what they are doing is illegal, or that the address
> they are writing to is for an institution that is unwittingly involved as a
> result of being hacked.
>
>
>
> Here's an example of one such email (leaving off the signature part - they
> are all very open as to who they are):
>
> I’m a French OT student, actually doing litterature researches for my
> studies. I’m using scihub to get some articles that I need to reed for that
> work. Today my access has been blocked.
>
>
>
> I would be very grateful to you if you could open my access.
>
> And another:
>
> My access to sci-hub has been temporarily denied, due to excessive
> downloads. I am sorry but I am actually writing my thesis and need to read
> that many articles.
>
>
>
> I would be really grateful if you could give my access back. I cannot
> afford paying for all those articles online. My thesis is due for early
> November. You guys are my only option.
>
>
>
> We've been able to use our ezproxy logs to trace back the most recent
> activity to a particular student's compromised account, and dealt with that
> one that we could find.
>
>
>
> If I understand what's happening, Sci-Hub has collected a huge number of
> compromised usernames/passwords from many institutions and tries them
> (right through our proxy server) when the article someone requests from
> them is not already in their archive. If so, it's probably rare that this
> illegal use will even trigger an "excessive use" denial and consequently
> any chance of us even knowing this is going on.
>
>
>
> Has anyone else gotten emails like this?
>
>
>
> If so:
>
> How do you handle it, aside from trying to find the breached account? Do
> you try to explain to the "user" that what they're doing is illegal?
>
> Are you further lowering your max downloads for major publisher sites to
> try to stop it?
>
>
>
> --
>
> Melissa Belvadi
>
> Collections Librarian
>
> University of Prince Edward Island
>
> mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581
>
>
>
>
>

-- 
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca 902-566-0581
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