IP Address Shenanigans: A Comedy of Zeros and Octals Gone Awry!
The Internet Storm Center and DShield websites are celebrating 25 years, and it’s time to say goodbye to the “15 character 0-padded” IP address format. This questionable decision from the past is finally getting a makeover to the standard dotted decimal format. Watch out for any lingering zeros!
Hot Take:
Ah, the ol’ leading zeroes conundrum—it’s like wearing bell-bottom jeans to a tech conference. Sure, it was cool 25 years ago, but now it just makes everyone look twice and question your life choices. Kudos to Dr. Ullrich for finally giving those IP addresses the glow-up they deserve. The Internet Storm Center is catching up with the 21st century, one dot at a time!
Key Points:
- Internet Storm Center and DShield websites are celebrating a quarter-century of existence.
- Original IP address format used 15-character, 0-padded format for sorting ease.
- This format can cause confusion with octal interpretation due to leading zeros.
- Transitioning to standard “dotted decimal” format as defined in RFC 4001.
- MySQL’s inet_aton() function has had its own quirky journey with IP addressing.
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