Three Organisations, One Mission: Spamhaus-abuse.ch Partners with Modat

Introducing Modat

If you haven’t come across Modat yet: they continuously scan, profile, and analyse internet-scale infrastructure, turning a mess of fragmented data into intelligence that people can trust and act on. By understanding the intent behind infrastructure before it’s weaponised, Modat helps security teams to investigate threats faster, understand the adversaries they’re up against, and prevent attacks before they happen.

United by a shared purpose

Spamhaus and abuse.ch bring community-driven threat intelligence shared by researchers, for researchers. Modat brings internet-scale scanning and internet intelligence. Different tools, but with a shared purpose: to help analysts, researchers and security teams doing the investigating, get there faster. And all three organisations recognize that making the internet safer starts with supporting those already on the front line. As Vincent Thiele, Co-Founder and COO at Modat, puts it:

“Before Modat I was on the other side of this, running security teams that quietly depended on work like Spamhaus's and abuse.ch's. You learn fast how much of the industry rests on a small number of researchers giving their findings away and asking for nothing back. That's why we publish our own research, and why we want Magnify in the hands of the researchers and research groups doing that work. It's the most direct way I can think of to be useful to them, and we're grateful to be working alongside people in the community and organizations who have been at this considerably longer than we have.”

Here’s what that means right now

As part of the partnership, we’re giving free Modat Magnify licenses to abuse.ch’s top contributors, to say thank you for the time, expertise and effort you already give freely to this community. This access is to further enhance  your research and continue strengthening what you share to community platforms like ThreatFox - a platform for sharing IOCs associated with malware.

One abuse.ch contributor already using Modat Magnify shares what it means for their work:

"Since switching to Modat six months ago, I've found their support extremely valuable, both technically and in working with the research community. The platform hasn't just let me keep contributing to abuse.ch and publishing my feeds freely; it's significantly expanded the coverage I'm able to provide, from C2 infrastructure to RMM tools consistently abused in real-world ransomware incidents. Over the past six months, Modat has developed at a rapid pace, increasingly covering the data points researchers rely on for tracking C2 and malware. Overall, the move has been seamless and has genuinely improved the breadth and quality of what we're able to contribute to abuse.ch and the wider security community."

So what’s next?

This is just the start. Down the line, we’re looking at deeper collaboration, including data sharing to strengthen the intelligence both communities rely on. For now, we’re just genuinely excited to be working alongside the Modat team and supporting the people out there making the internet safer. Carel Bitter, CEO at Spamhaus-abuse.ch, comments:

“Our sharing platforms are all about empowering the infosec community to make an impact by bringing their data, insight and, the people together, and amplifying that signal. So it makes sense to go further and give the Spamhaus-abuse.ch community access to the tools they need to do their best work. This partnership with Modat is a great example of that: together, we’re helping threat researchers find, share and, in the end, disrupt.”