Topic: Computing/Networking
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π Port Knocking
In computer networking, port knocking is a method of externally opening ports on a firewall by generating a connection attempt on a set of prespecified closed ports. Once a correct sequence of connection attempts is received, the firewall rules are dynamically modified to allow the host which sent the connection attempts to connect over specific port(s). A variant called single packet authorization (SPA) exists, where only a single "knock" is needed, consisting of an encrypted packet.
The primary purpose of port knocking is to prevent an attacker from scanning a system for potentially exploitable services by doing a port scan, because unless the attacker sends the correct knock sequence, the protected ports will appear closed.
Discussed on
- "Port knocking" | 2020-05-15 | 254 Upvotes 178 Comments
π RFC-1149: IP over Avian Carriers
In computer networking, IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC) is a proposal to carry Internet Protocol (IP) traffic by birds such as homing pigeons. IP over Avian Carriers was initially described in RFC 1149, a Request for Comments (RFC) issued by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), written by D. Waitzman, and released on April 1, 1990. It is one of several April Fools' Day Request for Comments.
Waitzman described an improvement of his protocol in RFC 2549, IP over Avian Carriers with Quality of Service (1 April 1999). Later, in RFC 6214βreleased on 1 April 2011, and 13 years after the introduction of IPv6βBrian Carpenter and Robert Hinden published Adaptation of RFC 1149 for IPv6.
IPoAC has been successfully implemented, but for only nine packets of data, with a packet loss ratio of 55% (due to operator error), and a response time ranging from 3,000 seconds (β54 minutes) to over 6,000 seconds (β1.77 hours). Thus, this technology suffers from poor latency. Nevertheless, for large transfers, avian carriers are capable of high average throughput when carrying flash memory devices, effectively implementing a sneakernet. During the last 20 years, the information density of storage media and thus the bandwidth of an avian carrier has increased 3 times as fast as the bandwidth of the Internet. IPoAC may achieve bandwidth peaks of orders of magnitude more than the Internet when used with multiple avian carriers in rural areas. For example: If 16 homing pigeons are given eight 512Β GB SD cards each, and take an hour to reach their destination, the throughput of the transfer would be 145.6 Gbit/s, excluding transfer to and from the SD cards.
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- "IP over Avian Carriers" | 2021-05-24 | 16 Upvotes 1 Comments
- "RFC-1149: IP over Avian Carriers" | 2019-06-05 | 186 Upvotes 82 Comments
- "IP over Avian Carriers" | 2017-06-11 | 44 Upvotes 6 Comments
π Inferno Operating System
Inferno is a distributed operating system started at Bell Labs and now developed and maintained by Vita Nuova Holdings as free software. Inferno was based on the experience gained with Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the further research of Bell Labs into operating systems, languages, on-the-fly compilers, graphics, security, networking and portability. The name of the operating system and many of its associated programs, as well as that of the current company, were inspired by Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. Interestingly, in Italian, Inferno means "hell" β of which there are nine circles in Dante's Divine Comedy.
Discussed on
- "Inferno Operating System" | 2019-07-20 | 188 Upvotes 97 Comments
π Y Combinator cofounder was convicted under CFAA in 1990
Robert Tappan Morris (born November 8, 1965) is an American computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for creating the Morris worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the Internet.
Morris was prosecuted for releasing the worm, and became the first person convicted under the then-new Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. He went on to co-found the online store Viaweb, one of the first web-based applications, and later the funding firm Y Combinatorβboth with Paul Graham.
He later joined the faculty in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received tenure in 2006. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019.
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- "Y Combinator cofounder was convicted under CFAA in 1990" | 2013-01-18 | 171 Upvotes 71 Comments
π NOBUS (Nobody but Us)
NOBUS ("nobody but us") are security vulnerabilities which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) believes that only it can exploit. As such, NSA sometimes chooses to leave such vulnerabilities open if NSA finds them, in order to exploit them against NSA's targets. More broadly, it refers to the notion that some signals intelligence capabilities are so powerful or otherwise inaccessible that only the NSA will be able to deploy them, though recent analyses suggest that this advantage may be under stress.
Discussed on
- "NOBUS (Nobody but Us)" | 2020-01-15 | 184 Upvotes 55 Comments
π ZMODEM
ZMODEM is a file transfer protocol developed by Chuck Forsberg in 1986, in a project funded by Telenet in order to improve file transfers on their X.25 network. In addition to dramatically improved performance compared to older protocols, ZMODEM also offered restartable transfers, auto-start by the sender, an expanded 32-bit CRC, and control character quoting supporting 8-bit clean transfers, allowing it to be used on networks that would not pass control characters.
In contrast to most transfer protocols developed for bulletin board systems (BBSs), ZMODEM was not directly based on, nor compatible with, the seminal XMODEM. Many variants of XMODEM had been developed in order to address one or more of its shortcomings, and most remained backward compatible and would successfully complete transfers with "classic" XMODEM implementations.
ZMODEM eschewed backward compatibility in favor of producing a radically improved protocol. It performed as well or better than any of the high-performance varieties of XMODEM, did so over links that previously didn't work at all, like X.25, or had poor performance, like Telebit modems, and included useful features found in few or no other protocols. ZMODEM became extremely popular on bulletin board systems (BBS) in the early 1990s, becoming a standard as widespread as XMODEM had been before it.
Discussed on
- "ZMODEM" | 2016-10-22 | 132 Upvotes 99 Comments
π Project Xanadu
Project Xanadu ( ZAN-Ι-doo) was the first hypertext project, founded in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Administrators of Project Xanadu have declared it an improvement over the World Wide Web, with the mission statement: "Today's popular software simulates paper. The World Wide Web (another imitation of paper) trivialises our original hypertext model with one-way ever-breaking links and no management of version or contents."
Wired magazine published an article called "The Curse of Xanadu", calling Project Xanadu "the longest-running vaporware story in the history of the computer industry". The first attempt at implementation began in 1960, but it was not until 1998 that an incomplete implementation was released. A version described as "a working deliverable", OpenXanadu, was made available in 2014.
Discussed on
- "Project Xanadu" | 2021-02-21 | 132 Upvotes 82 Comments
π Fallacies of Distributed Computing
The fallacies of distributed computing are a set of assertions made by L Peter Deutsch and others at Sun Microsystems describing false assumptions that programmers new to distributed applications invariably make.
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- "Fallacies of Distributed Computing" | 2011-04-21 | 139 Upvotes 48 Comments
π HTTP 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons
In computer networking, HTTP 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons is an error status code of the HTTP protocol to be displayed when the user requests a resource which cannot be served for legal reasons, such as a web page censored by a government. The number 451 is a reference to Ray Bradbury's 1953 dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, in which books are outlawed. 451 intends to provide more information than 403 Forbidden, which is often used for the same purpose. This status code is standardized in RFC 7725.
Examples of situations where an HTTP 451 error code could be displayed include web pages deemed a danger to national security, or web pages deemed to violate copyright, privacy, blasphemy laws, or any other law or court order.
The RFC is specific that a 451 response does not indicate whether the resource exists but requests for it have been blocked, if the resource has been removed for legal reasons and no longer exists, or even if the resource has never existed, but any discussion of its topic has been legally forbidden (see superinjunction). Some sites have previously returned HTTP 404 (Not Found) or similar if they are not legally permitted to disclose that the resource has been removed. Such a tactic is used in the United Kingdom by some internet service providers utilising the Internet Watch Foundation blacklist, returning a 404 message or another error message instead of showing a message indicating the site is blocked.
The status code was formally proposed in 2013 by Tim Bray, following earlier informal proposals by Chris Applegate in 2008 and Terence Eden in 2012. It was approved by the IESG on December 18, 2015. It was published as RFC 7725 in February 2016.
HTTP 451 was mentioned by the BBC's From Our Own Correspondent program, as an indication of the effects of sanctions on Sudan and the inability to access Airbnb, iOS's App Store, or other Western web services.
After introduction of the GDPR in European Economic Area (EEA) many websites located outside EEA started to serve HTTP 451 instead of trying to comply with this new privacy law.
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- "HTTP 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons" | 2019-10-25 | 72 Upvotes 18 Comments
- "HTTP 451 Unavailable for Legal Reasons" | 2019-03-22 | 18 Upvotes 2 Comments
- "HTTP 451: Unavailable for Legal Reasons" | 2017-01-26 | 10 Upvotes 1 Comments
π Valid Email Addresses
An email address identifies an email box to which email messages are delivered. A wide variety of formats were used in early email systems, but only a single format is used today, following the specifications developed for Internet mail systems since the 1980s. This article uses the term email address to refer to the addr-spec defined in RFC 5322, not to the address that is commonly used; the difference is that an address may contain a display name, a comment, or both.
An email address such as John.Smith@example.com is made up of a local-part, an @ symbol, then a case-insensitive domain. Although the standard requires the local part to be case-sensitive, it also urges that receiving hosts deliver messages in a case-independent fashion, e.g., that the mail system at example.com treat John.Smith as equivalent to john.smith; some mail systems even treat them as equivalent to johnsmith. Mail systems often limit their users' choice of name to a subset of the technically valid characters, and in some cases also limit which addresses it is possible to send mail to.
With the introduction of internationalized domain names, efforts are progressing to permit non-ASCII characters in email addresses.
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- "Valid Email Addresses" | 2012-11-30 | 50 Upvotes 59 Comments