Re: Accidental ARIN Reallocation

[Christopher Hawker via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

"accidentally reallocated" is a new one to me... You would think that there would be checks and balances in place to 
prevent this from happening, such as looking for any valid ROAs or route objects in ARIN's IRR database, looking for 
any existing Whois objects or BGP routes, etc. to make sure the route is not being used or delegated prior to 
redelegation.

Regards,
Christopher Hawker
________________________________
From: Chase via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
Sent: Wednesday, 10 December 2025 5:19 AM
To: nanog <nanog () lists nanog org>
Cc: Chase <chase () galaxygate net>
Subject: Accidental ARIN Reallocation

Hey NANOG,



After receiving a BGPAlerter notification that one of our subnets (23.150.164.0/24) had been hijacked, I checked and 
noticed the prefix in question was missing RPKI. Assuming I had fat fingered something and butchered the ROA, I logged 
into ARIN and found that the prefix was missing from our resource list entirely, and had been reallocated to another 
organization and announced from their network. I created a ticket in ARIN and called immediately.



They confirmed that our subnet had been accidentally reallocated to another customer, and that they are currently 
working on returning it to us. After a couple hours, they told us the other organization will stop announcing the 
prefix, and WHOIS will be returned shortly.



I’m guessing there’s no way to prevent this kind of thing on our side if the RPKI ROA itself is removed along with the 
allocation? I’m planning on adding checks to look for missing ROAs (in addition to invalid/expiring ones), which I'm 
guessing would've caught this earlier.



Have any of you had anything like this happen with ARIN or another RIR? I’m especially curious what might have happened 
if we’d only noticed and reached out a few weeks later instead of within a few minutes.



Best,

Chase Lauer

GalaxyGate, AS397031

https://galaxygate.net
_______________________________________________
NANOG mailing list
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/5MCMSACQADNXE65BTK34MQ3PXY4PDETF/
_______________________________________________
NANOG mailing list 
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/XDJIYKX5SEQFAXZDGQDZXVM4QDISB45B/