udpe506e
Say what?
- A program that sends one UDP packet containing 508
e- the maximum safe UDP payload size - to every address on the internet. - eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
- Uses port 101 (ASCII ordinal of
e) - I recommend you don't run it
- AGPL
- Comes with a 32-bit x86 linux binary, because I forgot to add that to the
.gitignore - R.I.P e30e/e98e
How do I build it?
Use rustc.
It seems slow. How long should it take to run?
Sending packets to all of IPv4 should take about 6 hours with a fast computer on a gigabit connection.
Sending them to all of IPv6 (which begins immediately after IPv4 is completed) will take at least 10
septillion years with the same setup. Make sure to run it on a VPS provided by a company that will be
around a while, like Amazon or Google.
How many e will this program send out in total?
If allowed to run until it stops, it will have transmitted precisely
172,863,442,395,836,739,439,394,300,577,520,094,806,016 e, or roughly 1.7 trillion trillion quadrillion
of them. one teraterapeta-e, if you will.
The actual number of e received by the destinations will of course be far less, because UDP does not
make any guarantees about delivery. Also, the vast majority of IPv6 addresses are unused. One could
sit here and look through the statistics to find a number of e expected to ultimately reach their
destination, but that sounds like a lot of work, and given the scale of the amount of data sent by this
program if it is allowed to finish, it seems unlikely that current statistics about the internet would
even be relevant anyway.
Will this actually reach every device connected to the internet?
No. This program will attempt to send one UDP packet to every IPv4 and IPv6 address. The specific devices this includes will vary depending on your local network, but generally speaking, its messages will only be delivered to devices that have a global IP address, which, thanks to the poor adoption of IPv6, does not include many personal devices.
If this were an ideal world in which every network used IPv6 and UDP packets were always delivered without a single drop, then every device on the internet worldwide would receive one spurious packet as a result of this program being run to completion. But we don't live in that world.
Will you help me make a distributed version of this that I can run on a botnet I control?
No.
Isn't this basically a DDoS attack? You shouldn't be using GitHub to host evil software!
What? No.
This is the opposite of DDoS attack. An effective DDoS involves many computers all sending data to a small number of target computers, overwhelming the target with a large volume of requests that consume resources to process. This program sends a single packet to each address on the internet, meaning that each server will receive about one packet. Since most servers probably won't expect it - and probably won't even run any services that listen on UDP port 101 at all - their software won't waste any time processing it. Given this, and the fact that the expected minimum time between packets for a randomly-selected IPv4 address is about three hours, this program is about as far from a DDoS script as can be imagined.
If you're still unconvinced, know that there are worms out there, such as
Linux.Muldrop.14, that constantly scan the IPv4 address
range for computers with SSH servers, and upon finding one, try to log in with a bunch of common/default
usernames and passwords. (If you run a Linux server, you may have noticed the logs of these attempts piling
up in lastb.) This happens constantly and consumes far more processing time on target machines
than this program does, and yet it still remains almost unnoticed.
Meanwhile, your computer - the one running this program - will have one of its processor threads loaded for septillions of years (or until you interrupt it), during which it will also be transmitting a huge amount of data that might very well saturate its network upload bandwidth. I suppose you could think of this as a "DoS attack" of sorts, but it's not distributed, and the only victim is yourself.
Won't someone out there be annoyed if anyone runs this, though?
Perhaps so!
Perhaps someone is running a weird experimental UDP service on their public server at port 101, which just
happens to have a weird buffer overflow vulnerability that makes it crash when it receives a packet
containing 508 es.
Perhaps Udp Georg, who lives in a cave and subsists only by eating stray UDP packets, will receive such a
windfall of nutrition from this packet full of e that he will break out of his cave and rampage across
the countryside, doing millions of dollars in damage before he finally slips on a banana peel and falls
into another cave.
Perhaps some server belonging to the Russian government has an ultra-sensitive IDS watching its UDP ports for that evil American nonsense, and the KGB will be dispatched to take you out as soon as this program crosses into Russian address space.
Perhaps Cabbage OS, the latest secret Apple prototype for their upcoming IoT line, uses port 101 for its covert spy system that receives instructions from Apple HQ, and by sending this packet, you will inadvertently uncover a conspiracy that will topple the American tech economy.
It's a big world out there! I have no idea how a given computer will react to being sent a packet full of
e. However, the conventions of networking say that a typical computer receiving an unsolicited,
nonsensical packet out of nowhere will probably just ignore it. Furthermore, if anything does react badly
to being sent a nonsense packet, it probably won't be my fault.
This page messes with GitHub's web UI! Will you please reduce the number of e?
No.
Why are you doing this whole super-defensive preemptive FAQ thing? Are you expecting backlash?
Well, maybe.
The original
e98e,
upon which this is based, got a ton of absurd angry issues opened by people who felt like they needed to
understand it. Rather than wait for someone to drop in and demand to know what the hell I'm on about, since
it seems like there's a nonzero chance of that, I figured I'd just say up front what I would otherwise say
in response, and save everyone the time.
Also, I think preemptive FAQs are kind of funny and amusing.
Okay, be level with me. What is this really about?
This is a piece of art with Dadaist inclinations, made very much in the spirit of the original
e98e,
and originally intended as a pull request for that project before it was archived. It's not meant to make
a point about anything, or test GitHub for any particular flaw, or do anything useful, or make you like me
more, or even be understood at all. It needs no purpose, and it simply is.
If you find it funny, that's great. But if you don't, then I don't care why. That's not what udpe506e is
about.
I promise it won't hurt you.