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Port 666 is officially registered to Doom

ibiblio.org

142 points by ughitsaaron · 57 comments

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14 threads
sybercecurity

Why not also include the IANA link: https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/...

  • rovr138

    https://www.iana.org/assignments/service-names-port-numbers/...

    mdqs 666 tcp

    mdqs 666 udp

    doom 666 tcp doom Id Software [ddt] [ddt]

    doom 666 udp doom Id Software [ddt] [ddt]

  • ughitsaaronOP

    That _is_ a much better link.

  • xyst

    So when I scan a server and 666 happens to be open. Nmap will now report “doom” under the “Service” header?

    Most people will get a chuckle, but I suspect laymen and even Christian zealots will throw a fit.

    Like when a normal person gets an error on their screen and it prints “process closed: child killed by parent”. It will probably raise an eyebrow at the very least, lol.

    • VladCuciureanu

      As a devout Christian who enjoys games like Diablo and Doom, I wanted to offer a different perspective. All of my Christian developer friends (small pool but still large, at around 15 people), including myself, have no issues with tech terms like daemons, master/slave, or killing processes (esp. child processes). Many of us understand the context and humor in technical jargon. In my experience, it's often non-technical people rather than Christians who find these references odd. But then again, what non-technical people run nmap?

      Just my .02c :^)

      Edit: casing

    • dspillett

      > but I suspect laymen and even Christian zealots will throw a fit.

      No doubt.

      I was once, back at university so two and a half decades ago, helping someone with accessing stuff on a Unix server (he was not much computer literate at all). He was ahem rather enthusiastically Christian, and unsettled by seeing 666, thinking we'd set it up and were having a jab at him (which, in fairness to his paranoia, some of us might have done).

      Those files were on a shared resource so shouldn't have been world writable, or even group writable for that matter, so we did report it (the directory wasn't writeable to me, so I couldn't fix it for them), but not because of the concerns our devout compatriot had!

    • SassyBird

      Superstitious people have been known to throw fits upon seeing the FreeBSD beastie logo: <https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/2011-Novemb...>

      See also: <https://web.archive.org/web/20040821031811/http://monster-is...> (that one is from 1999)

    • mjg59

      "now"? It's been registered that way since the 90s.

    • ziddoap

      >but I suspect laymen

      How many laymen are doing port scans, but also don't know to Google "port 666 doom" when they have a question?

      I suspect the number is pretty small. Small enough to not really be a concern.

    • ughitsaaronOP

      I think it’s easy to overestimate how thinly skinned most people really are because an exceptional complaint (that’s not easily dismissible) commands attention. (This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, insofar as it’s indicative of sympathy and sensitivity.)

    • lupusreal

      They threw a fit over Doom then got over it almost 30 years ago ;)

jsheard

616, the "other" number of the beast, was officially registered to SCO. Maybe also fitting in hindsight.

  • CalRobert

    For young'uns who weren't enjoying The Register's constant string of snarky headlines at the time...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes

    • CobrastanJorji

      If you're interested in getting WAY more detail on all of the aspects of that lawsuit, there was a truly amaazing and groundbreaking legal blog at the time called "Groklaw," run by a paralegal who was really great at breaking down every tiny move in the trial and contextualizing it to the larger battle. Was probably the start of my interest in following legal proceedings. She was so good at it that at one point SCO tried to depose her, believing that she was actually a front for IBM. The blog was sadly shut down in 2013 over privacy concerns, but it's still there, archived, although it probably isn't nearly as fun if you know the ending.

      • mrandish

        Oh, wow! I'd totally forgotten about GrokLaw. It was indeed a great (and regular) read back in the day.

    • giancarlostoro

      I forgot about this entirely. I remember it being a big fear, but I don't recall all the issues. I think there were even Distros that had versions accounting for what they didn't need from SCO.

    • ChrisMarshallNY

      > was dismissed with prejudice; SCO filed an appeal later that month.

      Doesn't "with prejudice" mean no appeal?

      • chowells

        No. It means that a case for the same incident cannot be filed again. When a case is dismissed without prejudice, it can be refiled if the plaintiff thinks they can make a better case at some future point.

      • alias_neo

        Even better, is that

        > SCO filed an appeal later that month.

        Is the end of the timeline... and that was 2016.

ChrisArchitect

Classic Id gang having fun where they could. The address of the office at their original building location was suite no.666.

4ad

It has been assigned to Doom for a very long time. A decade at least (maybe decades?).

Waterluvian

The idea of globally assigning ports to specific things feels so retro. Back when the world was a lot smaller.

Today it still makes abundant sense for more generic concepts like where you do HTTP or SSH but to register them to specific companies is amusing and nostalgic.

daveslash

In my RnD testing, when I just need an arbitrary port, 666 is my go to.

(a) It's almost never used by anything else and (b) <3 Doom

Unfortunately, I showed some software in a sprint demo once, using 666 as an arbitrary port. I was very clear that this port can be anything, because the software was made to be configurable by the user, and of course the project manager wrote it down and put it in the "official" and released documentation that the customer must use port 666. facepalm.

leoh

    rcst  3467/tcp   RCST
    rcst  3467/udp   RCST
    #      Kit Sturgeon <Kit@remotecontrolsextoys.com>
egberts1

Doom should have had that done decades ago.

Off-topic: It is nice to see my name amongst the register ports.

brazzy

I wonder how many protocols/servers that are "officially registered" there are by now completely out of use (as in, truly not actively used by anyone on the planet).

And how many of the listed email addresses still work.

  • dfox

    Most of the registered ports are for long forgotten services. This is compounded by the fact that many such services used multiple ports.

wizzwizz4

It's also shared by mdqs. What's that?

AdmiralAsshat

Do Doom multiplayer servers still use that port?

resource_waste

Does 'officially' do anything?

  • zeroxfe

    Yes, it means that you can reliably expect most UNIX/Linux systems (possibly even most OSs with IP stacks) to resolve the port "doom" to 666.

  • tialaramex

    Well, it does about as much as say, when Congress names an Aircraft Carrier, or ISO some day publishes C++ 23 (probably later this year).

    Concretely your Linux systems probably have a file named /etc/services which maps the string "doom" to port number 666, much as it maps "ssh" to 22 or "http" to 80.

throwitaway222

Shouldn't that be pruned at this point...

ydnaclementine

Based

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