Oh no! They've found me!

On Unix:
traceroute bad.horse

On Windows:
1. Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Command prompt
2. tracert -h 50 bad.horse

Comments

[Dash The Stampede]

Haha :V

I've had my eye on you for a whiiile

morleypedals.com/vai-11.jpg

[Derpmind]

Saw that on Reddit earlier. I doubt you were the one who actually set it up in the first place.

[Bad Horse]

3423942 I don't even know how they did it. horse is now a top-level domain, but those other words aren't. And it would be hella expensive to buy all those domains just for a prank.

[Andy Soshal]

Um...could you please explain this to my shit-eating nooblet self?

[TheJediMasterEd]

The Unix Vigilantes are on your trail!

And they'll bring you to justice as soon as they can gather enough parts to make a gun.

[Corejo]

That was awesome.

[Trick Question]

this is the most beautiful thing I have seen since I just watched Rarijack show five minutes ago

[Bad Horse]

3423976 I suspect that you're allowed to provide DNS name info for your own subnet, though you'd think they'd not let you change its domain.

[Trick Question]

3424258
Also, I didn't realize you were a thing of something until now, because I haven't watch much of the Doogie thing. I just thought Bad Horse was all oh-gee. (Not that I'm saying you're unoriginal or anything.)

I can only assume the o_o part sealed the deal on your username

[Titanium Dragon]

This is beautiful.

Whoever set this up had a lot of fun.

Note that if you go to bad.horse (just type it into your browser) it will actually play the song.

[Titanium Dragon]

3424342
Incidentally, if you've never watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, you should; it is wonderful.

[horizon]

This was well worth the time and money that someone spent on this moment of whimsy.

(Router setup, SSL certificate generation, domain name registration of bad.horse, etc.)

[equestrian.sen]

3423948
3423976

$ dig -x 162.252.205.147
;; ANSWER SECTION:
147.205.252.162.in-addr.arpa. 6979 IN PTR the.evil.league.of.evil.

SimpleDNS A special PTR-record type is used to store reverse DNS entries. The name of the PTR-record is the IP address with the segments reversed + ".in-addr.arpa".

Wikipedia The original use of the rDNS: network troubleshooting via tools such as traceroute, ping, and the "Received:" trace header field for SMTP e-mail, web sites tracking users (especially on Internet forums), etc.

serverfault Although it's not "nice", but you can enter almost anything (no spaces etc.) in the PTR field. It does not have to be a valid TLD (since valid TLDs are added/removed every now and then, and internal pages such as http://intranet/ would fail, if there was any validity checking implemented in both DNS and rDNS)

[Jordanis]

3423948
3423976

Traceroute works by sending successive UDP packets containing a standard ICMP Ping. Packets have a number in their header called 'Time to Live', or TTL. The sender sets that number, and every time a router receives the packet, it knocks one off that number before passing it along. When the number reaches 0, the router that has the packet at that point discards the packet and sends a message back to the sender letting them know that their packet expired. This is how the internet prevents packets from circling endlessly looking for their destination.

The important thing is that that return packet includes the name of the machine where the packet died, and that's what traceroute displays to you. And the machine just supplies that name, there's no one stopping you from having your machine return Traceroute packets claiming to be google.com, except that the DNS system will not send packets addressed to google.com to your machine in the first place.

Anyway, Traceroute doesn't know it's done until the destination machine replies to the Ping with the message that means 'hello, yes, I am the server you're looking for'. In this case, when you traceroute bad.horse, the first IP you get is the one that the public http page is served from--if you put 162.252.205.130 in your address bar, you get the Bad Horse song. If you just ping 162.252.205.130, however, notice that you're getting replies from 162.252.205.157, which is the machine that finishes the song--your plain ping gets invisibly routed through the whole chain to signed.bad.horse. Basically, he's got a DNS A record for bad.horse = 162.252.205.130 and another one for signed.bad.horse = 162.252.205.157. Everything in between is a static route he's set up internally of machines/VMs/whatever that only send out packet expiration messages and don't respond to a plain ping.

That's what it looks like to me, anyway. Someone who's better at networks than me can feel free to correct or clarify.

[Trick Question]

3424628
I've heard!

This is one of those things that I need to do but can't bring myself to. It's weird. I probably will see it someday though.

[Trick Question]

3424815
Agreed.

3423948
Did you actually just suggest that somepony could spend too much time, effort, or money on humor?

I mean, that better be impossible, because I'm definitely going to be fired someday for the lengths I am willing to go for the tiniest joke.

[Super Trampoline]

Man, there are a lot of nerd words here I don't get it.

[Levana]

apparently it flips you between 2 ips in milp.iphouse.net