[ WP ] You 're playing around on the Deep Web stumble upon a list of old unused government IP blocks . A quick scan reveals 1 IP still in use and only telnet is open ...

War is hell, IPv6 migration is hell as well and it is the particular hell I am most experienced with. Name's Ti and I have seen more seemingly foolproof IPv6 migrations fail than the average user even knows exist. I have seen more legacy software and horrible hacks being deployed than good for my mental stability. The problem is that nothing is quite as permanent like a temporary solution. And the hackier the more permanent. It would be too often that I would find out that there was somewhere a gracefully aged server which still had a crucial role for something... or which does n't have a crucial role anymore but no one knows what it does so it stays running. So, that one time I stumbled over the list of IP blocks that gone dark due to government usage but had been discontinued or never used, I was angry. I hate government waste. And depriving Africa and Asia of easily usable IPv4 blocks and instead forcing these developping countries with developping infrastructures into IPv6 is at least to me beyond cuel. I had to see whether these were still *used* for anything. I knew that I'd probably find jack in that, but I had to *know*. You know, a `` seeing is believing'' kind of thing. And as expected, most of the IP blocks contained absolutely jack, but then... there was something. A ridiculous amount of hops away, something was alive in that netblock. ( Of course it was barely under the maximal TTL, these areas are considered unroutable for a reason ). I portscanned the thing. It only had one open port: 23. Telnet. *Holy shit! * Of course I just fired up a terminal and telnetted into that system. Would you not? 
 
 My hands were shaking when I entered the full IP address. I admit it, but hey, in for a penny, in for a pound. I looked at the window in which the session ran. The terminal emulator had spit out nothing but garbage. 
 
 I cursed, cancelled the session immediately, just in case this thing was up to no good and tried to do some kind of exploit against my telnet client, fish shell or Yakuake. I made screenshots of the garbage and tried to find out more about it. 
 
 It took me several weeks coming up empty until I had an idea. Minds sometimes work weirdly and that was just an example. One of the useless C-level idiots in my current project kept on blathering on and on and on about some boxing match on the weekend and why that means that a certain switchover will be affected ( translation: do n't switch over then, I want to watch the match with my mates in the company ). Suddenly, I had an idea. KO... KO... KOI... KOI7, yes! Most of my coworkers were surprised that I took the rest of the day off, but no one dared questioning diarrhea, lest he would persuade me to stay at work and have to clean up. Telnet was standardized later than when it started to be implemented. And while international standards say that ASCII encoding is to be used for telnet, I myself violate that particular standard by using UTF-8, so why should n't they? A quick tweak of settings and I again enter the command, hoping that the server is still up. It is and this time, it reveals its secrets: `` Willkommen beim VEB Robotron-Buchungsmaschinenwerk Karl-Marx-Stadt.'' 
 
 Sometimes, an old box is kept running because it has a crucial role. Sometimes, it is kept running because no one knows what it does anymore.
