
PingFS - ashleyblackmore
http://www.shysecurity.com/posts/pingfs
======
semenko
Reminds me of the IPv6 "Type 0" routing header disaster, where you could store
data in routing loops.

See, e.g. slide 30 of: [http://www.secdev.org/conf/IPv6_RH_security-
csw07.pdf](http://www.secdev.org/conf/IPv6_RH_security-csw07.pdf)

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oakwhiz
So I take it this is the modern-day equivalent of the mercury delay line?

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moyix
This idea has been around for a long time; see e.g. Zalewski's paper from
2003:
[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/juggling_with_packets.txt](http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/juggling_with_packets.txt)

Cool to see an implementation though!

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bigiain
Heh - the logical abstraction/refactoring of "Only wimps use tape backup: real
men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world
mirror it"

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fennecfoxen
Would it be considered bad form to attach this application to a RFC 1149
network? It might actually _increase_ the recoverability of the data in
question.

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philrt
How much data could you store if you pinged the voyager 2 probe?

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adrianN
When Voyager was at Jupiter, communications allowed for a bitrate of roughly
115kbit/s. The distance from Earth to Jupiter is about 5AU. The current
distance to Voyager is 100AU, so let's say we still have a bitrate of 1kbit/s.
According to WolframAlpha, Voyager 2 is about 50000 light seconds away from
us. Now you can do the math.

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1_player
By the way, the linked slideshow is hilarious, never seen it before:
[http://www.slideshare.net/tenderlove/worst-ideas-
ever](http://www.slideshare.net/tenderlove/worst-ideas-ever)

~~~
stuglaser
A video of the talk is here:
[http://www.confreaks.com/videos/198-rubyconf2009-worst-
ideas...](http://www.confreaks.com/videos/198-rubyconf2009-worst-ideas-ever)

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jvdh
Link to Google Cache because the server seems to be overloaded:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:786NsZY...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:786NsZY7idIJ:www.shysecurity.com/posts/pingfs+http://www.shysecurity.com/posts/pingfs&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&lr=lang_nl%7Clang_en)

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tws5
> PingFS is a set of python scripts ... > Each file ... sent over the wire in
> an ICMP echo request, and promptly erased from memory.

can you actually reliably erase anything from memory in python?

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dantiberian
What exactly does this do?

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chadillac83
seems like it essentially keeps data stored by catching data from ICMP (ping)
packets, rewrapping them in another ping packet and shoving them back on the
network.

Think of it kind of like network RAM, the data isn't stored anywhere persay
and if either host fails to bounce back the payload the data is lost since it
wasn't stored on any single machine and only kept alive in limbo.

~~~
teddyh
The data _is_ stored somewhere. It's stored in the cache memory of all the
routers in between.

