AS278

AS278 is a long-established academic autonomous system registered through LACNIC to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico's largest public research university. The ASN dates to the late 1980s — its LACNIC RDAP autnum carries a top-level registration event of 1989-03-31, making it one of the oldest ASNs in Latin America and a direct artifact of UNAM's early role in bringing the Internet to Mexico. AS278 backs RedUNAM, the campus network, and is administered by NIC-UNAM (Centro de Información de RedUNAM), which handles IP allocation, unam.mx domain registration, reverse and secondary DNS, and CSIRT functions through the well-known UNAM-CERT team. The network is dual-stack and well-routed: roughly 162–167 IPv4 prefixes and 98–107 IPv6 prefixes are observed across bgp.he.net and bgp.tools, anchored by the historical Class B blocks 132.247.0.0/16 and 132.248.0.0/16 plus the 2001:1218::/32 IPv6 allocation. RPKI posture is strong (257 valid originations, zero RPKI-invalid), though bgp.he.net flags a cluster of IPv6 prefixes with IRR Parent Invalid status — a routing-registration mismatch with upstreams rather than a hijack. Transit is taken from five Mexican providers (UNINET, Alestra, Operbes, and Total Play). No outbound-abuse signal was found for the ASN itself; the operator's notable 2025–2026 security story is as a breach victim, not a threat source.

Operator

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM); LACNIC handle MX-UNAM1-LACNIC, administered by NIC-UNAM / UNAM-CERT [Confirmed] — rdap.lacnic.net/rdap/autnum/278, nic.unam.mx

Country / RIR

Mexico (MX), LACNIC [Confirmed] — rdap.lacnic.net/rdap/autnum/278; RIPEstat abuse-contact-finder (authoritative_rir: lacnic); ARIN 303-redirects to LACNIC for AS278

Allocated

1989-03-31 (LACNIC RDAP autnum top-level registration event — first-party RIR fact); record last changed 2011-05-03 [Confirmed] — rdap.lacnic.net/rdap/autnum/278

Org status

public, autonomous, secular university under Mexican law; #1 in Mexico, top-10 in Latin America by major rankings [Confirmed] — unaminternacional.unam.mx/en/unam, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Autonomous_University_of_Mexico

Contacts

abuse nic@unam.mx (+52 55 5622 8884, NIC-UNAM organisation line); NOC contact Hugo Rivera Martínez (PeeringDB) — his personal mailbox is withheld here, consult the PeeringDB/LACNIC records directly; website https://www.unam.mx, NIC https://www.nic.unam.mx/ [Confirmed for abuse/RIR; Likely for NOC via PeeringDB] — rdap.lacnic.net/rdap/autnum/278, peeringdb.com/asn/278

Security/abuse context (NEUTRAL, DATED)

no notable outbound-abuse signal for AS278 as of 2026-06-21 — no Spamhaus DROP/ASN-DROP listing found (Spamhaus checker returned 403; no secondary listing evidence), no NANOG abuse thread; ipinfo/bgp.tools activity tags (BitTorrent DHT, VPN, Tor) are typical for a large university network, not abuse-origination. UNAM was itself breached in Dec 2025–Jan 2026 by actor "ByteToBreach" (CVE-2025-66478 / exposed F5 BIG-IP SSH keys; ~380,000 records claimed; UNAM disputed extraction) and via a long-running Zimbra exploit (~907 GB IIMAS email, FGR complaint 2026-06-20) — attacks against the institution, not AS278 routing [Confirmed for abuse-null and incidents; sources dated] — bgp.he.net/AS278, ipinfo.io/AS278, mexicobusiness.news, infobae.com, jornada.com.mx, expansion.mx, upguard.com/security-report/unam

Network & routing

Network type

Academic / Research / Eyeball — university campus network (RedUNAM) for one of the world's largest universities; PeeringDB classifies it Educational/Research [Confirmed] — peeringdb.com/asn/278, bgp.he.net/AS278, bgp.tools/as/278

Size

~162–167 IPv4 prefixes (~131,584 addresses, incl. a /17 at 132.248.128.0/17) and ~98–107 IPv6 prefixes; bgp.he.net and bgp.tools agree within measurement-window variance [Likely] — bgp.he.net/AS278, bgp.tools/as/278

Routing/peering

announced and active; 5 upstreams — AS8151 (UNINET/Telmex), AS11172 (Alestra), AS18734 (Operbes), AS17072 & AS22884 (Total Play); ~8 BGP peers incl. academic peers AS18592 (CUDI), AS3596 (UAM), AS3640 (CICESE); avg IPv4 AS-path ~4.85–4.97 hops; PeeringDB policy Open, no IXP currently listed

[Likely] — bgp.tools/as/278, bgp.he.net/AS278, peeringdb.com/asn/278

RPKI

strong — 257 valid originated prefixes, 0 RPKI-invalid; however ~17 IPv6 prefixes show IRR Parent Invalid / Parent Route Origin Mismatch (registration lag with upstreams, flagged as bogons by bgp.he.net), a misconfiguration rather than malicious behavior

[Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS278, bgp.tools/as/278

Notable usage

operates RedUNAM; NIC-UNAM manages IP allocation, unam.mx domains, reverse/secondary DNS and CSIRT functions; UNAM-CERT is a FIRST member and Mexican threat-intel publisher; UNAM founded 1551, modern autonomous status 1933, 324,000+ students

[Confirmed] — nic.unam.mx, first.org/members/teams/unam-cert, unaminternacional.unam.mx/en/unam

Allocation type

DIRECT ALLOCATION [Confirmed] — rdap.lacnic.net/rdap/autnum/278

Primary blocks

IPv4 132.247.0.0/16 and 132.248.0.0/16 (also 192.100.199.0/24); IPv6 2001:1218::/32 (plus 2806:1070::/32 /48s observed) [Confirmed] — bgp.he.net/AS278, bgp.tools/as/278

Analyst note

Encountered as an active, historically significant academic ASN (35+ years) under UNAM. AS rank and customer-cone size were not returned by the consulted sources and are recorded Unknown. The A1 canonical fetch errored (rdap.org 406; RIPEstat JSON truncated), but RDAP/operator/routing/security/community angles agree on the core facts.