[107962] in Cypherpunks
Re: unexpected browser behavior
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Alan Olsen)
Sat Jan 30 01:34:33 1999
Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 14:18:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Alan Olsen <alan@clueserver.org>
To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
cc: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.02.9901291813140.3790-100000@ideath.parrhesia.com>
Reply-To: Alan Olsen <alan@clueserver.org>
On Fri, 29 Jan 1999, Greg Broiles wrote:
> 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>.
That trick has been known for a while. I found out about it when I was
asked to trace a spam using that sort of url. (I also found out that many
scientific calculator programs treat most (all?) of the class C address
space as a negative number.)
alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply
Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys.
