[107958] in Cypherpunks
unexpected browser behavior
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Broiles)
Fri Jan 29 21:54:52 1999
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 18:44:20 -0800 (PST)
From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
A friend at work got a spam which exposes a peculiar behavior which is
common to at least both Netscape Navigator 4.05 and MSIE 3.0; you can
replace the host portion of a URL (normally specified as a domain name or
dotted quad IP address) with the IP address of the host represented as a
32-bit number; for example, my machine, normally found at
<http://www.parrhesia.com> or <http://209.133.38.21>, can also be reached
at <http://3515164181>. The number only replaces the host part of the
address, so directory/file names like <http://3515164181/wassenaar/>
continue to work as expected.
I don't know if this is more accurately characterized as a bug or as a
feature - it's not a standard URL per RFC 1738
<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1738.html>.
But it's interesting.
--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles@netbox.com
