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Port 666 is officially registered to Doom

142 points| ughitsaaron | 1 year ago |ibiblio.org

53 comments

order

sybercecurity|1 year ago

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

xyst|1 year ago

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.

ChrisArchitect|1 year ago

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

4ad|1 year ago

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

jvolkman|1 year ago

The associated email address, ddt@idcube.idsoftware.com, was for Dave Taylor who worked at id from 93-96. So about 3 decades.

Waterluvian|1 year ago

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|1 year ago

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.

solardev|1 year ago

This is how cults begin.

leoh|1 year ago

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

egberts1|1 year ago

Doom should have had that done decades ago.

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

brazzy|1 year ago

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|1 year ago

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

resource_waste|1 year ago

Does 'officially' do anything?

zeroxfe|1 year ago

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|1 year ago

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.