Star Wars and TCP/IP what could be cooler? I have been wanting to share this since I first came across this great network hack back in February. This story made the rounds on all the popular tech blogs highlighting the work of Ryan Werber from Beagle Networks. To see how he actually pulled off this great hack (including the code he used) checkout the original post on Beagle Networks. Unfortunately the original traceroute has been discontinued due to repeated denial of service attacks after the popularity of the original posting. Thankfully, a new version (extended) has been posted that runs on IPv6. If you want to run this fun traceroute yourself you still can, instructions can be found in the blog post Special Treat! New Star Wars Traceroute. Traceroute - is a computer network diagnostic tool used to trace the path of packets of information as they are sent from one computer to another. The path of the packets are recorded at each node (or hop) in the network, relaying information on the time it takes to pas through each location. This Star Wars hack is a great example of controlling internal networking tables to display host names of all the various hops as lines from the Star Wars screen scroll from the opening sequence of Episode IV A New Hope.
Below is the original IPv4 traceroute from back in February (so glad I took a screenshot of it since its no longer available)
#WookieHowl!
