Engineer distributes resume via IPv6 traceroute

633 points by fjarlq 2 years ago | 150 comments
  • di 2 years ago
    Here's what it looks like:

        $ traceroute cv6.poinsignon.org
        traceroute to cv6.poinsignon.org (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::ff), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets
         1  gateway  0.795 ms  0.789 ms
        [...]
         8  hello (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::1)  1.431 ms  1.202 ms
         9  My.name.is.Louis.Poinsignon (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::2)  1.649 ms  1.274 ms
        10  I.am.a.network.and.systems.Engineer (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::3)  1.695 ms  2.090 ms
        11  This.is.my.resume.over.traceroute (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::4)  1.698 ms  1.793 ms
        12  o---Experience---o (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::)  1.829 ms  2.052 ms
        13  2018.Cloudflare.NetworkEngineer.SF (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf3)  2.261 ms  2.155 ms
        14  2017.Cloudflare.NetworkEngineer.London (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf2)  2.293 ms  1.284 ms
        15  2016.Cloudflare.NetworkEngineer.Intern.SF (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf1)  1.136 ms  1.205 ms
        16  2015.CEA.SoftwareEngineer.Intern.France (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cea)  1.204 ms  1.226 ms
        17  o---Education---o (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::)  1.360 ms  1.607 ms
        18  2015-2016.DrexelUni.Exchange.CE.Philadelphia (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::1)  1.237 ms  1.312 ms
        19  2011-2016.UTT.Master.CE.France (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::2)  1.492 ms  1.604 ms
        20  o---Skills---o (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::)  1.565 ms  1.418 ms
        21  C.Java.Python.Golang (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::1)  1.364 ms  1.536 ms
        22  Net.Linux.Automation (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::2)  1.381 ms  1.266 ms
        23  Statistics.Maths.Photoshop (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::3)  1.504 ms  1.431 ms
        24  o---Various---o (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:7a::)  1.461 ms  1.519 ms
        25  Swimming.and.karate (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:7a::1)  1.378 ms  1.473 ms
        26  Piano (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:7a::2)  1.552 ms  1.683 ms
        27  o---Contact---o (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:c0::)  1.551 ms  1.486 ms
        28  mail.jobs.at.poinsignon.org (2001:bc8:3eff:c0:c0::1)  1.576 ms  1.473 ms
    • yjftsjthsd-h 2 years ago
      > Cloudflare.NetworkEngineer

      Ah, that explains a lot. Not that anyone else couldn't do such a thing, but I feel like even amongst more "hacker" types it takes a relatively specialized background to pull a trick like this (at least statistically; I'm sure there are outliers).

      • chatmasta 2 years ago
        It’s because practical experience with technologies like BGP is difficult to acquire without sufficient capital to run a network. You can of course purchase a /24 and dabble (search HN for blog posts describing exactly that). And you can experiment with large deployments in simulators. But network optimization is inherently more of a practical pursuit than a theoretical one, so most broad and consistent learning opportunities are siloed to large organizations where you can accrue daily experience with the stack.

        This is really unfortunate, and I mostly blame Cisco and Juniper. They suffocated an entire academic discipline with obfuscated terminology driven more by their business models than anything resembling the OSI model or open standards. That’s why WireGuard feels like such a breath of fresh air after 20 years of L2TP/IPSec.

        I applaud companies like Cloudflare and Fly.io for their openness in sharing techniques and open sourcing so much of their code. It goes a long way toward lowering the barriers to self-teaching and experimenting with the latest networking software. And I’m sure HR is happy about the increasingly large applicant pool of qualified networking engineers – even if some hires do eventually leave by advertising their resume to anyone who sends them an IPv6 trace-route :)

        • jhugo 2 years ago
          I think consolidation has also lead to this knowledge/experience, at least among younger engineers, being siloed in larger companies rather than spread out among many smaller companies. I started in the industry when the Internet was still relatively new, and at that time most companies I worked with had their own ASN & address space and were running BGP, whereas nowadays most companies just use the cloud.
          • RF_Savage 2 years ago
            44Net and hamnet are also interesting to those with radio amateur licenses. Many folks run their own AS an BGP in that range.
            • samstave 2 years ago
              Fun Fact ; I'm not sure if it was RIP or BGP, but a certain Cisco Founder stated that they wouldnt have come up with the routing protocol if it weren't for Hoffman and LSD.
              • xhrpost 2 years ago
                > search HN for blog posts describing exactly that

                Know any offhand? Search is a bit tough for a common number like 24. The concept sounds interesting

                • 867-5309 2 years ago
                  it's ipv6 so a /120 would do!
                  • lawrenceyan 2 years ago
                    You can contribute to the Solana core tech team, with the incentive alignment of underlying token value as a partial backer!

                    I think they're doing some really cool stuff on the network optimization level. As an example, Solana recently implemented QUIC in its latest release: https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/projects/74

                  • prvit 2 years ago
                    This is a very old and oft-repeated trick though.

                    https://github.com/blechschmidt/fakeroute

                    https://github.com/antifork/hopfake

                    https://github.com/jprenken/rickroute

                    https://github.com/sams-gleb/ipv4-traceroute-fake

                    https://github.com/job/ipv6-traceroute-faker

                    And so on…

                    I remember being a 13yo kid sitting on IRC doing exactly this for fun years ago back when IP addresses were cheap and easy to come by. But spoofing military IPs in the traceroute was more fun.

                    • silentsea90 2 years ago
                      Believe it or not, you might have very specific interests :)
                      • exikyut 2 years ago
                        How would you spoof arbitrary IPs? IIUC it's poked at as the next hop...?

                        (Mhm, embarrassingly out of the loop)

                        • motohagiography 2 years ago
                          Fakeroute was the funniest thing in the world back then. Thank you.
                          • oars 2 years ago
                            Thanks for sharing these links.
                          • tyingq 2 years ago
                            Not sure how he did it, but my first guess would be just a bunch of virtual interfaces on a linux box with a->b->c->d->e->etc routing, and something like the tc command[1] to add enough latency to each one that traceroute sees them all.

                            If he's scripted it to do all the virtual nic creation and dns ptr entries, it would be interesting to see.

                            [1] https://bencane.com/2012/07/16/tc-adding-simulated-network-l...

                            • mrb 2 years ago
                              Virtual interfaces aren't necessary, and would be overkill. All he needs on his server is to listen on a raw network socket, read the incoming packet's IP TTL value, then forge and send an ICMP "time exceeded" response with the source IP address set to a value that depends on the TTL. The entire thing could be done in 20-30 lines of Python.

                              Next to that he set up a DNS server configured with PTR records that map these forged IP addresses to arbitrary hostnames of his choices.

                              • JoachimSchipper 2 years ago
                                traceroute(1) uses the IP Time-To-Live (TTL) field, not network latency. So just a bunch of virtual interfaces on a suitable *nix should be enough.
                              • vlan0 2 years ago
                                Feels like we’re a dying bread with everything cloud first and serverless.
                                • yjftsjthsd-h 2 years ago
                                  Eh, smaller slice of a bigger pie. Somebody has to make "the cloud" work so that everybody else doesn't have to worry about the underlying bits as much.
                                  • irrational 2 years ago
                                    Dying breed? Though dying bread sounds like an interesting metaphor.
                                    • mhh__ 2 years ago
                                      There are always nerdy kids learning this stuff.

                                      Especially when the breed has "died"

                                      • exikyut 2 years ago
                                        Ah so this is how "the next best thing since sliced bread"s die :'(
                                      • DropKiwiFarms 2 years ago
                                    • petalmind 2 years ago
                                      I think that many HRs would be suspicious about somebody who worked at each job for 2.261 ms.
                                      • quickthrower2 2 years ago
                                        It is not length of experience that counts, but skill. Some people with 100ms experience have just done the same millisecond over and over.
                                        • fragmede 2 years ago
                                          It's contracting work, so the short duration makes sense!
                                          • jcalabro 2 years ago
                                            2.261ms, aka a billable hour!
                                        • fragmede 2 years ago
                                          He must have added Apple at some point. Here's what I got (using mtr):

                                              19. hello                                                   0.0%    14  141.6 140.5 139.1 141.6   0.7
                                              20. my.name.is.louis.poinsignon                             0.0%    14  141.9 142.1 141.2 143.3   0.5
                                              21. i.am.a.network.and.systems.engineer                     0.0%    14  140.5 140.4 139.7 141.6   0.5
                                              22. this.is.my.resume.over.traceroute                       0.0%    14  140.5 140.4 140.0 141.5   0.5
                                              23. o---experience---o                                      0.0%    14  139.9 140.4 139.4 141.4   0.5
                                              24. 2021.apple.engineer.sf.usa                              0.0%    14  140.7 140.5 139.8 141.2   0.4
                                              25. 2018.cloudflare.engineer.sf.usa                         0.0%    14  140.8 140.4 139.4 142.8   0.9
                                              26. 2017.cloudflare.engineer.london.uk                      0.0%    13  142.2 142.6 141.4 147.5   1.5
                                              27. 2016.cloudflare.engineer.intern.sf.usa                  0.0%    13  149.7 141.2 139.1 149.7   2.7
                                              28. o---education---o                                       0.0%    13  142.1 142.1 141.3 144.1   0.7
                                              29. 2015-2016.drexeluni.exchange.ce.philadelphia.usa        0.0%    13  140.9 140.3 139.5 141.3   0.5
                                              30. 2011-2016.utt.master.ce.france                          0.0%    13  143.1 142.3 140.8 143.3   0.7
                                              31. o---skills---o                                          0.0%    13  140.3 140.9 139.7 146.0   1.6
                                              32. golang.c.python                                         0.0%    13  142.2 142.4 141.1 146.0   1.2
                                              33. networks.linux.automation.kafka.clickhouse.kubernetes   0.0%    13  139.6 140.5 139.3 142.2   0.8
                                              34. statistics.maths                                        0.0%    13  141.6 142.1 141.2 142.8   0.5
                                              35. o---various---o                                         0.0%    13  141.8 142.4 141.8 144.8   0.8
                                              36. swimming.karate.piano                                   0.0%    13  139.8 141.4 138.7 155.2   4.2
                                              37. o---contact---o                                         0.0%    13  140.1 140.3 138.6 141.7   0.8
                                              38. mail.jobs.at.poinsignon.org                             0.0%    13  141.1 142.5 141.1 145.4   1.1
                                              39. cv6.poinsignon.org                                      0.0%    13  139.4 140.3 139.4 141.2   0.5
                                          • reaperducer 2 years ago
                                            Remember when they said we'd never run out of IPV6 addresses?

                                            Good times.

                                            • bushbaba 2 years ago
                                              Will age just like the famous quotes about 640K of memory is enough.
                                              • WorldPeas 2 years ago
                                                they never anticipated the internet of internet of things. What a shame.
                                              • avg_dev 2 years ago
                                                speaking as a software developer who has generally forgotten what little i know of routing, that is really cool
                                                • a-dub 2 years ago
                                                  i love how the low bits of the addresses in hex are cognates for both the section and the actual content of the name/line.

                                                  also, looking glasses... jeez. i haven't heard or thought of those in _years_.

                                                  • psydvl 2 years ago
                                                    Why have you traceroute ip instead of domain?
                                                    • qHss6ID2JSztUgr 2 years ago
                                                      > Host mail.jobs.at.poinsignon.org not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

                                                      (A bit of a missed opportunity; the author should really set a AAAA record there IMHO)

                                                      There's no actual requirement that your PTR records resolve back to the same IP. Historically very little software bothered to check, and most of the Unix-y diagnostic software has never been updated to do so...

                                                      • josteink 2 years ago
                                                        > Historically very little software bothered to check

                                                        For some reason, most IRC servers tend to do this.

                                                        • bawolff 2 years ago
                                                          Unless you send email.
                                                        • internet_user 2 years ago
                                                          you could have multiple IPs attached to a domain which could mess up this trick.

                                                          I also wonder why not use use the domain, much easier.

                                                          • di 2 years ago
                                                            Bad copy/paste
                                                          • Exuma 2 years ago
                                                            So is that mail.jobs@ or mail+jobs@... or jobs@

                                                            A total flop on the last line

                                                            • readthenotes1 2 years ago
                                                              I bet if he can do this trace route thing, he can get all those emails going to his own domain regardless of who they are addressed to
                                                              • Exuma 2 years ago
                                                                I would presume a better way would be to not make people feel unsure of what it is, and just pick something thats super clear.
                                                              • FabHK 2 years ago
                                                                Not really. From the lines above one can deduce that the dot represents space or colon, for obvious technical reasons. As such, I'd interpret

                                                                  mail.jobs.at.poinsignon.org
                                                                
                                                                as

                                                                  mail: jobs@poinsignon.org
                                                                • munk-a 2 years ago
                                                                  I still think it's mail.jobs@ - so I'd hope the engineer set up collection on both addresses.

                                                                  It'd probably be a lot safer to just have the line be "jobs.at.[...]"

                                                                  Edited to add: Oh also - from the same line you can infer that a dot means a dot - the ".org" at the end confuses the meaning. Perhaps it'd be clearer if they went 100% slashdot and had ".DOT.org"

                                                                  • Exuma 2 years ago
                                                                    Yes really, you can see even in the other replies the interpretations are not 100% clear.

                                                                    It took me a minute to realize it wasnt some form of "mail+jobs" or "mail.jobs". It wasnt until I wrote the last line of my comment that it was "mail jobs@"

                                                                  • bkane521 2 years ago
                                                                    My interpretation was mail: jobs@poinsignon.org
                                                                    • randunel 2 years ago
                                                                      My interpretation would be mail+jobs@example.com, given that it's become the de facto standard, and mail@example.com looks like his main one.
                                                                    • account42 2 years ago
                                                                      Really, you're arguing about the email in a traceroute CV being somewhat ambiguous? Having to traceroute the thing is going to be a much bigger filter. And it's quite clear if you just read it out as spoken text and then try to get the address from that. Really, anyone actually interested in contacting the guy will manage just fine.
                                                                      • Exuma 2 years ago
                                                                        An extremely mediochre attitude. You must simply believe that things shouldn't be the best they can be, but rather things that are easily fixable for clarity should just be accepted. Typical garbage in garbage out.

                                                                        You can see there is more than a few replies of people who are confused about the email.

                                                                        "Ah yes, here is a thing thats a big filter, so let me make the email yet another filter but instead of just (EASILY) fixing it I will just use that as an excuse to leave it"

                                                                        How about... (huge surprise here......... wait for it)....... one just makes it better, such as:

                                                                        jobs.AT.domain.DOT.com

                                                                        I quite honestly cannot even understand the mental processes some people here go through. It's so clear, yet you're also not the first arguing for a retarded justification instead of just "fix it by making it less ambiguous" which is the ONLY correct answer. That is... unless you don't care about getting emails to your resume.

                                                                      • 2 years ago
                                                                      • silasdavis 2 years ago
                                                                        Oh noes you just doxxed their email address on the https
                                                                        • munk-a 2 years ago
                                                                          It's probably more accurate to "Oh noes this HN post is going to get this guy a few dozen really lucrative job offers".

                                                                          Doxxing usually implies ill intent but having your personal information broadcast to HN is likely only to result in a few of the hiring managers that haunt here sending a cold offer.

                                                                          • silasdavis 2 years ago
                                                                            Yes I thought so, as in you're quoted thing was exactly what I meant, sarcasm doesn't serialise well
                                                                            • fomine3 2 years ago
                                                                              I don't think writing obfuscated email address as plaintext is doxxing, but it may be collected spam bot.
                                                                        • billpg 2 years ago
                                                                          "That's very nice but can you email me a copy in Microsoft Word DOCX format please?"
                                                                          • jen729w 2 years ago
                                                                            I’m just about to live this hell. On advice from a friend, my response will be a simple one: no, because it doesn’t exist. It was written in Markdown [0]. Here’s a PDF.

                                                                            I’m expecting the usual pushback, and will reciprocate. I’ll let you know how it goes.

                                                                            [0]: https://github.com/johnnydecimal/resume/blob/main/resume.md

                                                                            (Yeah I shamelessly inserted my own résumé.)

                                                                            • lyjackal 2 years ago
                                                                              Pandoc does a good job of generating docx files from markdown
                                                                              • jamwil 2 years ago
                                                                                Went through this. Gave up and remade it in Word. Practical beats pure sometimes. Tough for us HN types.
                                                                                • ant6n 2 years ago
                                                                                  Can’t u just insert a screenshot of the of the pdf in a word document?
                                                                                • Aeolun 2 years ago
                                                                                  I gave up, I now generate my CV in docx from JSON, and convert that to PDF.
                                                                                  • rthomas6 2 years ago
                                                                                    I work for a company that was acquired by Leidos relatively recently. Hello fellow coworker.
                                                                                  • nwmcsween 2 years ago
                                                                                    Sure thing!

                                                                                    unzip resume.docx; cd resume; dd if=/dev/random of=crap.tax bs=1M count=19;cd ..; zip resume.docx resume

                                                                                    • Something1234 2 years ago
                                                                                      You're going to be sitting there for a while waiting for blocking random to fill 19MB. You want urandom.
                                                                                      • chungy 2 years ago
                                                                                        These days, blocking random isn't a thing anymore. /dev/random and /dev/urandom just do the same non-blocking operation.
                                                                                    • quickthrower2 2 years ago
                                                                                      Reply with:

                                                                                         traceroute cv6.poinsignon.org | pandoc -o whywhywhy-o-why.docx
                                                                                    • leibnitz27 2 years ago
                                                                                      Great, but not Bad Horse great.

                                                                                      https://www.a2wd.com/traceroute-bad-horse/

                                                                                      • calibas 2 years ago
                                                                                        No wonder we're running out of IPv4 addresses.
                                                                                        • jeroenhd 2 years ago
                                                                                          It's only a /27, they were quite affordable a year or ten ago. A full /24 went for about $2500 back in 2015 when this was made and you can subdivide that to 8 customers who all get 30 usable addresses. Bit expensive for a joke, but not unmaintainably so.

                                                                                          It's silly that ISPs have messed up their IPv6 deployment so badly that there's a "shortage" of IPv4 addresses now. Of course, IPv4 was never going to be enough; there are too many people on earth.

                                                                                          • remram 2 years ago
                                                                                            I wonder whether you could do this with a lower number of IPs, just repeating them in the traceroute reply. You might not be able to build a real network like that, but if you're manually replying to ICMP with a raw socket, this should be possible, I doubt the client tries to de-duplicate based on addresses.
                                                                                            • Bud 2 years ago
                                                                                              I guess you didn't really look; these are IPv6 addresses.
                                                                                              • bmicraft 2 years ago
                                                                                                not in the link gp was responding to
                                                                                          • bhaney 2 years ago
                                                                                            "IMCP" looks to be a typo.

                                                                                            Normally wouldn't bother to mention, but, you know, CVs

                                                                                            • OJFord 2 years ago
                                                                                              Might be a 'Frencho'.
                                                                                              • remram 2 years ago
                                                                                                Where do you see IMCP?
                                                                                                • bhaney 2 years ago
                                                                                                  The typo was fixed a few hours later
                                                                                              • bandyaboot 2 years ago
                                                                                                I’d like to imagine one of the troubleshooting steps for Cloudflare’s help desk when they see an uptick in customer service disruption complaints is to hit up Louis to ask if he’s updating his resume again.
                                                                                                • betaby 2 years ago
                                                                                                  That's how it's done probably https://github.com/blechschmidt/fakeroute
                                                                                                • jvdvegt 2 years ago
                                                                                                  I guess the site can only be reached over IPv6? It seems I only have IPv4 :(
                                                                                                  • verst 2 years ago
                                                                                                    That could be a feature if he didn't want to work at companies that don't have a IPv6 network :)
                                                                                                    • ju-st 2 years ago
                                                                                                      Doesn't seem to be the case, apple.com does not have an AAAA record. :(

                                                                                                      Also shame on Microsoft for no full IPv6 support in WSL2.

                                                                                                      (The CV posted above is outdated, this is what the traceroute shows today)

                                                                                                        8    37 ms    36 ms    36 ms  hello [2001:bc8:3eff:c0::1]
                                                                                                        9    32 ms    32 ms    31 ms  My.name.is.Louis.Poinsignon [2001:bc8:3eff:c0::2]
                                                                                                       10    33 ms    32 ms    31 ms  I.am.a.network.and.systems.engineer [2001:bc8:3eff:c0::3]
                                                                                                       11    35 ms    36 ms    35 ms  This.is.my.resume.over.traceroute [2001:bc8:3eff:c0::4]
                                                                                                       12    37 ms    35 ms    36 ms  o---Experience---o [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::]
                                                                                                       13    36 ms    35 ms    35 ms  2021.Apple.Engineer.SF.USA [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::714]
                                                                                                       14    33 ms    34 ms    31 ms  2018.Cloudflare.Engineer.SF.USA [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf3]
                                                                                                       15    32 ms    34 ms    33 ms  2017.Cloudflare.Engineer.London.UK [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf2]
                                                                                                       16    38 ms    36 ms    35 ms  2016.Cloudflare.Engineer.Intern.SF.USA [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ee::cf1]
                                                                                                       17    36 ms    35 ms    34 ms  o---Education---o [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::]
                                                                                                       18    36 ms    35 ms    34 ms  2015-2016.DrexelUni.Exchange.CE.Philadelphia.USA [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::1]
                                                                                                       19    37 ms    32 ms    32 ms  2011-2016.UTT.Master.CE.France [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:ed::2]
                                                                                                       20    37 ms    34 ms    35 ms  o---Skills---o [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::]
                                                                                                       21    36 ms    36 ms    34 ms  Golang.C.Python [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::1]
                                                                                                       22    36 ms    34 ms    36 ms  Networks.Linux.Automation.Kafka.Clickhouse.Kubernetes [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::2]
                                                                                                       23    33 ms    33 ms    33 ms  Statistics.Maths [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:51::3]
                                                                                                       24    31 ms    32 ms    31 ms  o---Various---o [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:7a::]
                                                                                                       25    34 ms    35 ms    35 ms  Swimming.Karate.Piano [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:7a::1]
                                                                                                       26    36 ms    34 ms    35 ms  o---Contact---o [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:c0::]
                                                                                                       27    32 ms    34 ms    31 ms  mail.jobs.at.poinsignon.org [2001:bc8:3eff:c0:c0::1]
                                                                                                       28    33 ms    35 ms    30 ms  cv6.poinsignon.org [2001:bc8:3eff:c0::ff]
                                                                                                      • profmonocle 2 years ago
                                                                                                        apple.com is just a redirect to www.apple.com, which does have IPv6.

                                                                                                        Apple has been slowly but surely adding IPv6 to their public network services - App Store and OS downloads come over IPv6, and their NTP resolver just added IPv6 support.

                                                                                                        I guess the department that controls that apple.com -> www.apple.com redirect just hasn't bothered, which is interesting because such a simple, dumb redirect service is one of the easiest things to dual-stack (as in it probably doesn't store IPs or have to worry about blocking at all, it just responds with a 301)

                                                                                                    • 300bps 2 years ago
                                                                                                      I think it's reasonable to assume that this whole thing has been a marketing campaign to get people to finally have a reason to switch to IPv6.

                                                                                                      All kidding aside, IPv6 isn't even required for their website or this traceroute trick. He just set up an in-addr.arpa reverse DNS zone to reverse resolve particular IP addresses to specific values. If you had a block of 20 IPv4 addresses, I don't see anything stopping you from doing the exact same thing.

                                                                                                      • yyyk 2 years ago
                                                                                                        >If you had a block of 20 IPv4 addresses, I don't see anything stopping you from doing the exact same thing.

                                                                                                        A block isn't necessary at all, even on IPv4. Traceroute can easily show internal address or just be lied to. Just recently we've seen a different example of this on HN:

                                                                                                        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32566730

                                                                                                        • stonekyx 2 years ago
                                                                                                          IP addresses can be lied about, but reverse DNS still needs your ownership of those IP addresses if I understand it correctly. One would need the provider of those IP addresses to setup PTR records for them.
                                                                                                      • jeroenhd 2 years ago
                                                                                                        No A record, so I guess so.

                                                                                                        If your ISP doesn't block ICMP, you can get IPv6 capabilities using tunnels like https://tunnelbroker.net/. Especially useful if you have a router you can configure this stuff on so all of your devices get IPv6 for free. Completely free of charge and with minimal latency if you live somewhere near a data centre.

                                                                                                        • withinboredom 2 years ago
                                                                                                          Netflix and friends won’t work over them. But with some clever routing, you can get it to work… I just got native ipv6 last winter and had to use tunnels like this for years.
                                                                                                        • zamadatix 2 years ago
                                                                                                          https://i.imgur.com/EA1uspm.png

                                                                                                          All of the links just go to Wikipedia and the traceroute is as shown (minus the initial hops of course)

                                                                                                          • 2 years ago
                                                                                                            • jackinloadup 2 years ago
                                                                                                              Same, it begins. My ISP needs to get it's act together.
                                                                                                            • contingencies 2 years ago
                                                                                                              An old hack.

                                                                                                              For the history books, IIRC proff (Julian Assange) presented this hack in 1997, shortly after he wrote strobe.c (1995; AFAIK the first TCP half-open scanner). Here's a 1998 public posting of the code: https://packetstormsecurity.com/files/12995/fakeroute.c.html

                                                                                                              At that time, the running joke was to provide inbound traceroutes spoofed next hops which implied you were working for a government agency (the Australian Federal Police, the Defence Signals Directorate (now Australian Signals Directorate) or the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (now the Defence Science and Technology Group)).

                                                                                                              Free Julian.

                                                                                                              • biermic 2 years ago
                                                                                                                Some CTO guy who I work with does this with the password for internal docs. He thinks he is 1337.

                                                                                                                How long will it take, until someone gains access? I consider this an intentional security leak.

                                                                                                                • chirau 2 years ago
                                                                                                                  Non-networking guy here. Anyone care to explain what is special or impressive about this? It went over my head
                                                                                                                  • thrwyoilarticle 2 years ago
                                                                                                                    I wonder if these things ever pay off, or if it just ends up attracting a lot of opportunities to be part of a normal application system where it's a one-way system of proving your worth to the company?
                                                                                                                    • imhoguy 2 years ago
                                                                                                                      Well, at least it reached HN first page where a lot of hacker in heart managers and C*Os circle around, the potential employers.
                                                                                                                    • zamadatix 2 years ago
                                                                                                                      Missed opportunity to hide a secret message in hops 30+ or such :).
                                                                                                                      • gghh 2 years ago
                                                                                                                        I recall seeing something similar a while back, you'd traceroute to some IP address and the output was the opening text of a star wars movie https://www.theregister.com/2013/02/15/star_wars_traceroute/
                                                                                                                        • notRobot 2 years ago
                                                                                                                          There's also

                                                                                                                              telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
                                                                                                                        • 0x0 2 years ago
                                                                                                                          Doesn't work properly here, I get a very local IPv6, then one row of stars, then the third hop is the destination?

                                                                                                                            % traceroute6 -w1 cv6.poinsignon.org
                                                                                                                            traceroute to cv6.poinsignon.org (2001:bc8:3eff:c0::ff), 30 hops max, 80 byte packets
                                                                                                                             1  2a01:x:x:x::1 (2a01:x:x:x::1)  0.794 ms  0.913 ms  0.737 ms
                                                                                                                             2  * * *
                                                                                                                             3  2001:bc8:3eff::1 (2001:bc8:3eff::1)  39.555 ms  39.668 ms  39.560 ms
                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                          Not sure why "traceroute6" stops at the "...::1" but "mtr" shows an equivalent 3-hop route but actually shows "...::ff" for the third and final hop? (Edit: Using "-I" with "traceroute6" makes the third and final hop also show up as "::ff". Strange that ICMP vs UDP would give different IP addresses for the final hop?)
                                                                                                                          • profmonocle 2 years ago
                                                                                                                            Some middlebox in your network is probably mucking with something. Are you behind a corporate firewall?
                                                                                                                            • 0x0 2 years ago
                                                                                                                              No, should be a native IPv6 consumer ISP... But now that you mention it, most other IPv6 sites act like this as well. Sorry, it's probably my ISP or maybe my router. Guess I haven't been tracerouting IPv6 much since getting native IPv6 connectivity.
                                                                                                                          • laundermaf 2 years ago
                                                                                                                            If you can’t see this, your ISP doesn’t resolve IPv6, probably.

                                                                                                                            It works for me once I enable “WARP” from my 1.1.1.1 app on iOS.

                                                                                                                            • pm2222 2 years ago
                                                                                                                              Doesn't work here.

                                                                                                                                ALARM ~ $ tracepath 2001:bc8:3eff:c0::ff
                                                                                                                                 1?: [LOCALHOST]                        0.015ms pmtu 1500
                                                                                                                                ...
                                                                                                                                ...
                                                                                                                                 2:  ALPHEUS-COM.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net             15.966ms 
                                                                                                                                 3:  ae5-3828.edge1.Washington1.Level3.net                 4.011ms 
                                                                                                                                 4:  2001:1900:2::3:18                                    77.693ms 
                                                                                                                                 5:  2001:1900:5:2:2::4a0a                                78.469ms asymm  4 
                                                                                                                                 6:  2001:bc8:400:1::8a                                   78.737ms asymm  7 
                                                                                                                                 7:  2001:bc8:400:1::13a                                  78.635ms asymm  6 
                                                                                                                                 8:  no reply
                                                                                                                                 9:  no reply
                                                                                                                                10:  no reply
                                                                                                                                11:  no reply
                                                                                                                                12:  no reply
                                                                                                                                13:  no reply
                                                                                                                              • aidenn0 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                I suspect that whatever underlying implementation is used only catches ICMP packets, not UDP packets.

                                                                                                                                [edit]

                                                                                                                                Note that "tracepath -m60 bad.horse" works just fine.

                                                                                                                              • alex14fr 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                Funnily enough he didn't bother to put something in his default htdocs directory : https://poinsignon.org/
                                                                                                                                • foresto 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                  See also: traceroute -m 60 bad.horse
                                                                                                                                  • aidenn0 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                    Note also that unlike TFA, bad.horse works with tracepath.
                                                                                                                                    • dr-detroit 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                    • jonathantf2 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                      Thought it was a dead link since it didn't work on my mobile data or home internet, turns out it's just a v6 only DNS record.
                                                                                                                                      • Evidlo 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                        • zoom6628 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                          Just damn clever. Shows several aspects of knowledge and application.
                                                                                                                                          • baobabKoodaa 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                            I wonder what HR thinks about this resume format?
                                                                                                                                            • mouzogu 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                              it's nice that for once, hr is the one being filtered.
                                                                                                                                            • talhof8 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                              But do you know how to bubble sort an array?
                                                                                                                                              • aynyc 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                It’s a simple dynamic programming problem. /s
                                                                                                                                            • 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                              • low_tech_punk 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                Is traceroute Turing complete?
                                                                                                                                                • rcarmo 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                  Pretty awesome :)
                                                                                                                                                  • walrus01 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                    missed opportunity for a hop of all.your.base.are.belong.to.us

                                                                                                                                                    main.screen.turn.on

                                                                                                                                                    how.are.you.gentlemen

                                                                                                                                                  • dr-detroit 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                    • 2 years ago
                                                                                                                                                      • DropKiwiFarms 2 years ago