My fiber optical modem broadcasts a poem via ethernet frame 0x8300(gist.github.com)
gist.github.com
My fiber optical modem broadcasts a poem via ethernet frame 0x8300
https://gist.github.com/riobard/c7eb86aa3586c36ffaa75f7be3b57d66
12 comments
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32870553/telling-a-story...
Huh! Maybe it is some sort of keepalive beacon. But why not use some normal standard way?
Maybe it is some _copyrighted_ beacon? I've read somewhere that Oracle have made some verse a part of some network API of theirs to be able to copyright it.
The original LEGO Mindstorms had a handshaking mechanism like this. The firmware for the RCX brick was stored in battery-backed RAM, so you had to re-upload it via infrared whenever you changed the batteries. But the ROM bootloader would only accept a firmware image if it contained the string:
> "Do you byte, when I knock?"
After uploading, the host computer would send an "unlock request" with the string "LEGO®", at which point the RCX would return the other half of the rhyme:
> "Just a bit off the block!"
I assume the only reason for jumping through these hoops was to have a legal excuse to discourage other companies from making interoperable products. I have no idea whether this strategy would have actually held up in court; in any case, there were plenty of homebrew tools that just embedded the magic strings anyway.
> "Do you byte, when I knock?"
After uploading, the host computer would send an "unlock request" with the string "LEGO®", at which point the RCX would return the other half of the rhyme:
> "Just a bit off the block!"
I assume the only reason for jumping through these hoops was to have a legal excuse to discourage other companies from making interoperable products. I have no idea whether this strategy would have actually held up in court; in any case, there were plenty of homebrew tools that just embedded the magic strings anyway.
Nintendo did this with the GameBoy boot logo. It doesn't stand up in court.
Any links about the court case? I tried googling but it only came up with technical info about how it works.
Something in nature like "DontstealOSX" or whatever that SMBIOS string in Mac machines is called?
In any case, doing this to an API is just plain nasty... but I believe at least under European law it's still getting trumped by the right to interoperability and reverse engineering.
In any case, doing this to an API is just plain nasty... but I believe at least under European law it's still getting trumped by the right to interoperability and reverse engineering.
You mean "Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext."
And the Hackintosh equivalent was dsmos.kext. Which would "inject" the required system calls to trick OSX into running on non Apple hardware.
And the Hackintosh equivalent was dsmos.kext. Which would "inject" the required system calls to trick OSX into running on non Apple hardware.
Reminds me of the folklore.org[1] story about the Steve Jobs-requested, Susan Kare-designed bitmap embedded in the original Macintosh ROM to catch cloners.
[1] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
[1] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
There's a "ourhardworkbythesewordsguardedpleasedontsteal(c)applecomputerinc" too.
That strategy doesn't work in my country as the law clearly stated mere protocol is not copyrightable.
Another interesting case was, Nintendo released a floppy disk with their logo relief and use its presence for DRM purpose. When third party released a compatible floppy disk, Nintendo sued them for trademark violation. Nintendo lost.
Another interesting case was, Nintendo released a floppy disk with their logo relief and use its presence for DRM purpose. When third party released a compatible floppy disk, Nintendo sued them for trademark violation. Nintendo lost.
The gameboy hashes the bitmap nintendo logo displayed by licensed cartridges at boot and compares it to a saved value.
Unless I'm missing something, it appears to be going out on the customer-side Ethernet. So there's really nothing to keep alive on that side.
A lot of residential modems are also providing networking for IPTV set top boxes. This could be a keep alive for them (even if this particular provider doesn't offer that service).
It's possible it dumps it out all interfaces.
Google has a couple of versions that seem like a match.
> The day I lost my very first tooth,
> Was halfway through grade four,
> I'd run my tongue along the gap,
> Where my tooth had been before,
> I remember I want home crying,
> And showed it to my mum,
> She told me that a brand new tooth,
> Would grow up in my gum,
> In a while the gap would stop feeling strange,
> I wouldn't notice the tooth was gone,
> The only reason I missed it now,
> Was because it was there for so long,
> Then slowly but surely over the weeks,
> In the gap a new tooth grew,
> And now it makes me wonder,
> If people are like teeth too.
https://www.wattpad.com/53876107-descend-teeth
> The day I lost my very first tooth,
> Was halfway through grade four,
> I'd run my tongue along the gap,
> Where my tooth had been before,
> I remember I want home crying,
> And showed it to my mum,
> She told me that a brand new tooth,
> Would grow up in my gum,
> In a while the gap would stop feeling strange,
> I wouldn't notice the tooth was gone,
> The only reason I missed it now,
> Was because it was there for so long,
> Then slowly but surely over the weeks,
> In the gap a new tooth grew,
> And now it makes me wonder,
> If people are like teeth too.
https://www.wattpad.com/53876107-descend-teeth
I've traced the author to be Erin Hanson. Her other works can be found at https://www.poemhunter.com/i/ebooks/pdf/erin_hanson_2006_2.p...
Oldest version I can find is by "thepoeticunderground" as an image from 2017.
https://touch.facebook.com/e.h.thepoeticunderground/photos/a...
https://touch.facebook.com/e.h.thepoeticunderground/photos/a...
I know I'm just talking to myself but I'm liking this rabbithole.
There is another mention of this earlier this year.
https://twitter.com/riojot/status/1268821579724541954?lang=e...
> My ISP-provided optical modem broadcasts a poem line every 10 seconds to my local network from address 00:00:00:00:00:12 using ethertype 0x8300 frames. Anyone knows why? It's simultaneously amusing and scary.
There is another mention of this earlier this year.
https://twitter.com/riojot/status/1268821579724541954?lang=e...
> My ISP-provided optical modem broadcasts a poem line every 10 seconds to my local network from address 00:00:00:00:00:12 using ethertype 0x8300 frames. Anyone knows why? It's simultaneously amusing and scary.
That's also me. Still couldn't figure out the story behind this, so I'm posting to HN for help! :D
Cute and relatable for someone who was dumped recently. :P
Likewise, albeit not quite so recently (~5 months ago).
What's strange is how the poem relates to me somewhat differently being as that "gap" has already started to slowly fill. Honestly, it put a smile on my face. I love how little things like a simple poem can become so relatable to all of us.
Regardless, I'm sorry to hear of your loss. Please do give yourself time to heal--I know it sounds cliché but it's absolutely of the utmost importance. Without knowing the context, it's almost certainly for the better. It took me a while to realize that toxic people can--and WILL--drag you down no matter how much you might love them or try to work things out. Plus side is that in my case, the problem solved itself once I stopped responding to her patterns of behavior that were causing us issues!
If you need to let off some steam or just want someone anonymous to talk at, feel free to email me at my HN username at gmail.com. Having been down that road not all that long ago, I know how you feel.
What's strange is how the poem relates to me somewhat differently being as that "gap" has already started to slowly fill. Honestly, it put a smile on my face. I love how little things like a simple poem can become so relatable to all of us.
Regardless, I'm sorry to hear of your loss. Please do give yourself time to heal--I know it sounds cliché but it's absolutely of the utmost importance. Without knowing the context, it's almost certainly for the better. It took me a while to realize that toxic people can--and WILL--drag you down no matter how much you might love them or try to work things out. Plus side is that in my case, the problem solved itself once I stopped responding to her patterns of behavior that were causing us issues!
If you need to let off some steam or just want someone anonymous to talk at, feel free to email me at my HN username at gmail.com. Having been down that road not all that long ago, I know how you feel.
Thank you very much for your reply, I really appreciate it and it resonates with me. It wasn’t so recent, but as you said things take some time to heal.
Relationships sometimes end in a sunk cost fallacy: you’ve spent so much time with someone, you think you have to fix the broken relationship at any cost, even if you’re the only one who’s still invested. And that leads to toxicity and being taken advantage of.
Relationships sometimes end in a sunk cost fallacy: you’ve spent so much time with someone, you think you have to fix the broken relationship at any cost, even if you’re the only one who’s still invested. And that leads to toxicity and being taken advantage of.
> It wasn’t so recent, but as you said things take some time to heal.
It does. Even last month (this ended in May--just 4 days after my birthday) I had a regression catching myself thinking about things. Usually little things. Stupid little things. Maybe I'd across something funny and thought briefly about sharing it with her only to realize that cutting off all communication is a one-way street. You can't go back. If you do, you risk opening those old wounds.
I know this isn't a popular place to say this, so I won't dwell on it, but what helped me immensely was getting back into church. Networking with other people whose compassion gave me an outlet was a tremendous relief.
I think that's the real key though: Having a support network is the most important keystone in paving a road to success after personal hurt. It's not easy, and you're right--it takes a lot of time. A dear friend whom I made through this told me, using his own experiences (he lost his son just 2 years ago) as a guide: You can get bitter or you can get better. It's a choice.
> you think you have to fix the broken relationship at any cost
This really hit home. Mine wasn't bad (or abusive), but even in spite of it, I felt exactly that way. If things went south for whatever reason, I wanted nothing more than to recover it back to the prior state. Love is hard, but the fear of losing that love is even harder.
Honestly, if I were smart, there were a number of red flags that should've been an indication I needed escape the situation. But, I wasn't. I fully accept that my choices were entirely stupid and motivated by the fact that I didn't want to hurt her. (It sounds ridiculous typing this out since I feel I'm just trying to rationalize it ex post facto, but it's how I felt at the time.)
> And that leads to toxicity and being taken advantage of.
...even if sometimes that "being taken advantage of" is strictly emotional!
I think what made it worse for me was that we were very close friends before the relationship started, and during it. Losing a romantic interest is one thing; losing someone who was your best friend for so long? That's much harder. The only way I could mentally rationalize it in the beginning was to pretend she passed away. In a strange series of mental gymnastics, I guess she did. She transformed into someone I didn't recognize (fancy title in front of her name; justified treating me differently), and that friend I had for so long honestly did die--at her own hands.
I know that as this post ages, there'll be others who stumble on it and wonder why the heck I typed all this out. Then there'll be those few who read our conversation here and realize that, yes!, things really do get better. It hurts. It sucks. You'll dwell on it for a while. But you can't dwell on it forever! For my part, a new gal has taken my interest from church, and I'm hoping to grow a new friendship just to see where the path leads. I was worried I wouldn't keep my heart open to such things; but, I realized that if I closed it off, I was letting that other person inflict harm on my future relationships. That's not fair to anyone, and it's giving a person who's no longer in my life far too much control that they don't deserve.
I'm going to cherish that poem. Ironically, I hadn't intended to browse HN tonight, then came across this headline.
Sorry about the lengthy post. Your comment really impacted me and made me take a moment to reflect on everything.
Thank you so much!
It does. Even last month (this ended in May--just 4 days after my birthday) I had a regression catching myself thinking about things. Usually little things. Stupid little things. Maybe I'd across something funny and thought briefly about sharing it with her only to realize that cutting off all communication is a one-way street. You can't go back. If you do, you risk opening those old wounds.
I know this isn't a popular place to say this, so I won't dwell on it, but what helped me immensely was getting back into church. Networking with other people whose compassion gave me an outlet was a tremendous relief.
I think that's the real key though: Having a support network is the most important keystone in paving a road to success after personal hurt. It's not easy, and you're right--it takes a lot of time. A dear friend whom I made through this told me, using his own experiences (he lost his son just 2 years ago) as a guide: You can get bitter or you can get better. It's a choice.
> you think you have to fix the broken relationship at any cost
This really hit home. Mine wasn't bad (or abusive), but even in spite of it, I felt exactly that way. If things went south for whatever reason, I wanted nothing more than to recover it back to the prior state. Love is hard, but the fear of losing that love is even harder.
Honestly, if I were smart, there were a number of red flags that should've been an indication I needed escape the situation. But, I wasn't. I fully accept that my choices were entirely stupid and motivated by the fact that I didn't want to hurt her. (It sounds ridiculous typing this out since I feel I'm just trying to rationalize it ex post facto, but it's how I felt at the time.)
> And that leads to toxicity and being taken advantage of.
...even if sometimes that "being taken advantage of" is strictly emotional!
I think what made it worse for me was that we were very close friends before the relationship started, and during it. Losing a romantic interest is one thing; losing someone who was your best friend for so long? That's much harder. The only way I could mentally rationalize it in the beginning was to pretend she passed away. In a strange series of mental gymnastics, I guess she did. She transformed into someone I didn't recognize (fancy title in front of her name; justified treating me differently), and that friend I had for so long honestly did die--at her own hands.
I know that as this post ages, there'll be others who stumble on it and wonder why the heck I typed all this out. Then there'll be those few who read our conversation here and realize that, yes!, things really do get better. It hurts. It sucks. You'll dwell on it for a while. But you can't dwell on it forever! For my part, a new gal has taken my interest from church, and I'm hoping to grow a new friendship just to see where the path leads. I was worried I wouldn't keep my heart open to such things; but, I realized that if I closed it off, I was letting that other person inflict harm on my future relationships. That's not fair to anyone, and it's giving a person who's no longer in my life far too much control that they don't deserve.
I'm going to cherish that poem. Ironically, I hadn't intended to browse HN tonight, then came across this headline.
Sorry about the lengthy post. Your comment really impacted me and made me take a moment to reflect on everything.
Thank you so much!
That's just under 5KB per minute, or about 200MB per month. Odd.
Its on your local LAN, so that's nothing.
More importantly, it might cause some devices to wake their network hardware or even CPU's up every 10 seconds, and significantly shorten battery life.
A device that wakes on broadcast packets of an unknown type would be very poorly designed and wouldn't get much sleep on any network. Wake-on-LAN usually only wakes up when it receives a magic packet, or possibly if it it receives a packet addressed specifically to that device (not broadcast).
My 'home' network (with 10 people, 70 unique devices last month), there are currently only about 15 broadcast packets per minute, and they're all things that could be filtered/handled in wifi firmware (DHCP requests, multicast management traffic, STP stuff, ARP discovers, etc.).
If other networks are like mine, then it would be reasonable for firmware to wake up for any unhandled thing, since the application processor might need to handle that unknown message, and to not wake up would leave the application developer sad...
If other networks are like mine, then it would be reasonable for firmware to wake up for any unhandled thing, since the application processor might need to handle that unknown message, and to not wake up would leave the application developer sad...
I always thought it would be a unique method of prayer (for an existing or new religion) that used part of the IPv6 packet header or an ICMP packet. We would be sending prayers at random with a ttyl to be broadcast across existing networks, and routers/endpoints could choose to listen.
Reminds me of this one: https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2015/mar/17/terr...
An HTTP header as a memorial.
An HTTP header as a memorial.
Ah, this is used for loop detection by Huawei CPE.
Configuration reference: http://huawei.communicationsmuseum.org.uk/MA5616/clireferenc...
Configuration reference: http://huawei.communicationsmuseum.org.uk/MA5616/clireferenc...
Would have been more fitting to use
Algorhyme
I think that I shall never see
A graph more lovely than a tree.
A tree whose crucial property
Is loop-free connectivity.
A tree that must be sure to span
So packets can reach every LAN.
First, the root must be selected.
By ID, it is elected.
Least-cost paths from root are traced.
In the tree, these paths are placed.
A mesh is made by folks like me,
Then bridges find a spanning tree.
-Radia PerlmanThe author of this poem is actually the inventor of the Spanning Tree Protocol (which the poem describes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radia_Perlman
P.S. For those who like nerdy poems, here's a poem which is a proof of the undecidability of the Halting Problem: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2008/01/19/how-dr-suess-wou...
P.S. For those who like nerdy poems, here's a poem which is a proof of the undecidability of the Halting Problem: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2008/01/19/how-dr-suess-wou...
But the modem is not made by Huawei. Its model number is G-140W-UD and it's made by Shanghai Nokia-Bell Co.,Ltd.
Could it be from the ISP-side devices?
Could it be from the ISP-side devices?
It could be using Huawei software and hardware. Serbian ISP "Telekom Srbija" which uses mostly Huawei HG8245Q2 ONTs and has standardized on Huawei OLT and Core network, also uses these Nokia branded devices. AFAIK the Huawei GPON network is incompatible with other vendors which is why there's a small part of the capital city Belgrade stuck on old ZTE CPEs as that was a part of a pilot FTTH project with ZTE before China financed this rollout.
So, my point being, given they also use this exact Nokia ONT, it could very well mean that it's compatible with Huawei because it IS, in part, Huawei.
So, my point being, given they also use this exact Nokia ONT, it could very well mean that it's compatible with Huawei because it IS, in part, Huawei.
Thanks for the explanation! It certainly made more sense now :)
But why a poem and why THIS poem?
That's the other (and arguably more interesting) part of the puzzle! :)
Could it be for trademark / copyright protection? There was an anti-spam mechanism in the past that worked this way. If you abused the system, they could sue you for millions. No idea if that is still around.
> Could it be for trademark / copyright protection?
Oracle uses this to connect SQL*Plus client to the database. This way, if you make a client without signing one their draconian contracts, they can sue you for infringing the copyrights on the poem.
Oracle uses this to connect SQL*Plus client to the database. This way, if you make a client without signing one their draconian contracts, they can sue you for infringing the copyrights on the poem.
A shortish poem like this seems like a nice match. Ethernet has a minimum packet size, which is around the length of a line. The whole poem is short enough that you can remember it, but long enough that seeing a duplicate line would give you a good idea of having a network loop (possibly with delay) or having a second sender that started at an offset (although, maybe there's some ID information in the packet before the text begins).
This poem seems cute and memorable, and unlikely to offend any censors, and may have been available under a permissive license?
This poem seems cute and memorable, and unlikely to offend any censors, and may have been available under a permissive license?
I'm the owner of the modem. I've found about this a couple of months back when I moved the modem to its own vlan and noticed the broadcast frames. I did some research into the author of the poem on Twitter (https://twitter.com/riojot/status/1268821579724541954), but nothing fruitful.
If anyone knows how the poem ended up in my modem, or even just what's ethertype 0x8300 all about, please comment!
If anyone knows how the poem ended up in my modem, or even just what's ethertype 0x8300 all about, please comment!
See my comment below :)
Hmmmm,
Looks like ethertype 0x8300 is covered in this Chinese patent titled "Access-network looped network monitoring method" https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102263658B/en
Chinese version: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a3/f8/5e/8a9fcd4...
Looks like ethertype 0x8300 is covered in this Chinese patent titled "Access-network looped network monitoring method" https://patents.google.com/patent/CN102263658B/en
Chinese version: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a3/f8/5e/8a9fcd4...
The type 8300 is not a registered standard and the patent includes a payload description: "mac, port-info, vlan-info" (yes some is redundant to the headers, that is explicitly mentioned) and that doesn't fit the data. Maybe "Huawei compatible" in the meaning of "can be understood by their devices, but not exactly as patented by them". If a ring with a second such device is formed, it might respond with a different poem.
Yeah,
There are dozens of ether-types that are not standardized. There is also 0x8899 which is Realtek Remote Control Protocol (RRCP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtek_Remote_Control_Protoco...
There are many more but I don't remember them off the top of my head. I probably need more coffee.
There are dozens of ether-types that are not standardized. There is also 0x8899 which is Realtek Remote Control Protocol (RRCP)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtek_Remote_Control_Protoco...
There are many more but I don't remember them off the top of my head. I probably need more coffee.
This story is slightly munged due to my own faulty memory and to obfuscate the guilty parties...
The company I work for develops network appliances for large backbone and provider networks. One of the things these appliances do is maintain a "hearbeat" with each other so that if one disappears, the others know about it and can send an alert to the NOC.
The heartbeat packets themselves needed some kind of payload, even though the payload was not important. At that time, the company was still a small and scrappy startup so humor was generally encouraged. So naturally the engineer decided the payload should be a random line from a list of pirate quotes. Ship-its all around and the feature made it into the next major product release.
A couple months later, a very angry call comes into the helpdesk from someone _very_ high up in the food chain of a major U.S. telecom. It turns out they had noticed the pirate quotes in a random packet dump they were looking at and the network team spent a whole weekend thinking their network was very deeply compromised because our appliances were one of the tools they were using to inspect the network and kept seeing the "Yarr, Matey!" and such everywhere they looked.
Needless to say, the pirate quotes went away in a few days as part of an emergency patch and the heartbeat message was changed to something more mundane but less likely to trigger heart attacks in our customers.
The company I work for develops network appliances for large backbone and provider networks. One of the things these appliances do is maintain a "hearbeat" with each other so that if one disappears, the others know about it and can send an alert to the NOC.
The heartbeat packets themselves needed some kind of payload, even though the payload was not important. At that time, the company was still a small and scrappy startup so humor was generally encouraged. So naturally the engineer decided the payload should be a random line from a list of pirate quotes. Ship-its all around and the feature made it into the next major product release.
A couple months later, a very angry call comes into the helpdesk from someone _very_ high up in the food chain of a major U.S. telecom. It turns out they had noticed the pirate quotes in a random packet dump they were looking at and the network team spent a whole weekend thinking their network was very deeply compromised because our appliances were one of the tools they were using to inspect the network and kept seeing the "Yarr, Matey!" and such everywhere they looked.
Needless to say, the pirate quotes went away in a few days as part of an emergency patch and the heartbeat message was changed to something more mundane but less likely to trigger heart attacks in our customers.
Amazing story, thanks for sharing it. Any chance the pirate quotes got replaces with a random poem on the internet in this story? :D
> Needless to say, the pirate quotes went away in a few days as part of an emergency patch and the heartbeat message was changed to something more mundane but less likely to trigger heart attacks in our customers.
It's like the engineer picked the literal worst possible thing to send over the wire. Like making an alarm clock for people who have wartime PTSD that fires off a 9mm round to wake you up.
More startups need to be cognizant of this. Humor is important but there is a balance between fun and idiotic.
It's like the engineer picked the literal worst possible thing to send over the wire. Like making an alarm clock for people who have wartime PTSD that fires off a 9mm round to wake you up.
More startups need to be cognizant of this. Humor is important but there is a balance between fun and idiotic.
At work we have a test for these things: "If you would be uncomfortable explaining something to an auditor or judge, don't include it in the product." I think it is a good test because there are many in-jokes and engineering terms that don't sound good to laypeople.
See also: any time a "subversion repo" is discussed in the mainstream media (see for example the breathless coverage of how Levandowski used one to steal the chauffeur project files from Google).
A "git repo" isn't completely neutral either, at least in the UK.
Something I found myself saying recently: "When the parent process is about to die it's tries to kill its children, otherwise the orphans stick around holding onto their ports which is super annoying."
Questionable search you may have to explain to your family includes:
"How to kill child of parent with fork"
"How to kill child of parent with fork"
how to kill zombie - kill their parents. repeat until no more parents are left.
If you had omitted the word ‘process’ you would have achieved the height of perfection.
Can someone translate the filter used in that tcpdump command to wireshark syntax?
eth.type == 0x8300
Isn't it copyright infringement?