As of January 2021, the Pentagon assigned 175 Million IPv4 addresses to a new and “unknown” Florida based company named Global Resource Systems, LLC. According to ARIN, it is important to note that this is not a permanent transfer. Nevertheless, this came as a bit of a shock to the internet community for the following four reasons:
- The company Global Resource Systems, LLC was only registered as of October 2020
- The ARIN account was somehow created in September 2020, prior to the company registration
- The event occurred only days before President Biden was appointed into office
- This is the first time these dormant IPv4 addresses have ever been re-assigned
It seems that the Department of Defense still manages the IPv4 address space, while Global Resource Systems is simply managing the IPs. According to The Hill. “Defense Digital Service (DDS) authorized a pilot program to advertise DoD IPv4 Addressees using BGP sessions. This pilot will evaluate. test and hopefully prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,” DDS Director Brett Goldstein told The Hill.
What makes this even more odd is that DOD could have just announced the IPv4 addresses themselves using one of many ASN’s assigned directly to the DOD. There will have to be more of an investigation into Global Resource Systems, which according to the Florida Secretary of State is run by Raymond Saulino alone
As it stands today, this massive move of IPv4 addresses represents 1/25 size of the current internet. According to ipnfo.io, Global Resource Systems manages more IPv4 addresses than At&t, Comcast, Microsoft, Verizon, Amazon and Lumen.