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

Wed Oct 5 06:53:05 PDT 2016

Howdy,
See this admittedly old EZProxy listserv thread that discusses EZProxy and CAPTCHA:  http://osdir.com/ml/education.ezproxy/2008-02/msg00172.html. Many of the concerns/issues remain, and in addition there are known issues with EZProxy and Google’s CAPTCHA.

Two factor authentication at the institution level is certainly helpful and something more places are moving towards. Moving from LDAP to Shibboleth authentication proved helpful for us. Ultimately when dealing with EZProxy there is no substitute for actively monitoring audit log files. I was part of a presentation for OCLC where I discussed this topic, view the recording here<https://oclc.webex.com/oclc/lsr.php?RCID=e0cd4b59099040b48b0e4f180c97917f>.

I should also mention I created a Perl script the parses the daily audit log and sends an email to the EZProxy admin with information to help identify compromised accounts. There is some technical setup, but we have found it useful. The code is available here: https://github.com/prbutler/EZProxy_Audit_Log_Email_Script.

Cheers, Paul
-------------------------------------------------
Paul R Butler, mlis
Library Technologies Support Analyst
Library Information Technology Services (L.I.T.S)
Ball State University<bsu.edu>
Muncie, IN  47306
P: 765.285.8032
E: prbutler at bsu.edu<mailto: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] On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Tuesday, October 04, 2016 4:00 PM
To: Craig Boman <craig.boman at gmail.com>
Cc: eril-l <eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
Subject: Re: [Eril-l] Sci-Hub users asking us to restore their access!

Well, that would require LDAP/Shibboleth (we use Shib with our ezproxy) to also keep the country-filter. I figured since ezproxy already has some config code to resolve and block IPs based on country, it would make more sense to implement it there, as it would mean a lot more functionality to add at the other level. We wouldn't want our Shib server to just start Captcha'ing every single authentication - it would drive the rest of the campus unrelated to the library services bonkers.

I will check out the EZProxy discussion list.

Melissa

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 4:48 PM, Craig Boman <craig.boman at gmail.com<mailto:craig.boman at gmail.com>> wrote:
If I understand this issue correctly, the captcha wouldn't necessarily be implemented by EZProxy, but rather the authentication to EZproxy. In most cases I would presume this to be either LDAP or Shibboleth. Perhaps we should be encouraging these two organizations to use captchas, if they haven't already. Another option would be to enable two factor authentication for university resources. This is something my university has recently done.

All the best,
Craig

Craig Boman, MLIS (Ph.D student)
Applications Support Specialist
University of Dayton Libraries
Cboman1 _ at _ udayton _dot_ edu
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7511-4078
"The reason is that good management itself was the root cause. Managers played the game the way it was supposed to be played. The very decision-making and resource-allocation processes that are key to the success of established companies are the very processes that reject disruptive technologies." -- Clay Christensen

On Tue, Oct 4, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Steve Oberg <steve.oberg at wheaton.edu<mailto:steve.oberg at wheaton.edu>> wrote:
One suggestion I have is to direct this line of inquiry to the EZProxy discussion list, where you might get more exposure to the issue plus a forum that OCLC EZProxy representatives actively engage with. For details see http://www.oclc.org/support/services/ezproxy/documentation/list.en.html

Steve

Steve Oberg
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Electronic Resources and Serials
Wheaton College (IL)
+1 (630) 752-5852<tel:%28630%29%20752-5852>

NASIG Vice-President/President-Elect
[cid:image002.png at 01D21EED.8B3192D0]

On Oct 4, 2016, at 2:19 PM, Melissa Belvadi <mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca>> wrote:

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<mailto: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<mailto:robert.heaton at usu.edu>

From: Eril-l [mailto:eril-l-bounces at lists.eril-l.org<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<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca>>; eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto: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<tel:765.285.8032>
E: prbutler at bsu.edu<mailto: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] On Behalf Of Melissa Belvadi
Sent: Monday, October 03, 2016 12:41 PM
To: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org<mailto: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<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581<tel:902-566-0581>

--
Melissa Belvadi
Collections Librarian
University of Prince Edward Island
mbelvadi at upei.ca<mailto:mbelvadi at upei.ca> 902-566-0581<tel:902-566-0581>

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

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