HD Moore Pings the Entire Internet

I like these kinds of charts. In this case it is a map of all the Internet connected devices in the world, or at least per the 2.7 billion IP addresses (310 million replies) that computer security guru HD Moore pinged to get data for his map. On his off time as a researcher at Rapid7, he uses an arsenal of computers at home to run such experiments. Says Moore, "I have a lot of cooling equipment to make sure my house doesn't catch on fire." Part of the goal was to determine how many people never changed the default password for their modems and other gateway devices. It was a lot. Although everything he did was legal, he did get complaints from some of the pinged. Do you still have the default password on your wireless router? I just checked a few of my neighbors' WiFi connections and didn't find any with 'default' as the password.

Posted April 2013

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...