Everything we’ve written on IP addressing, DNS, networking, VPNs, privacy, sockets and security — all articles, newest first.
A socket is the handle your program holds onto one end of a network conversation. You create it, you point it at an address and port, and you read and write bytes. The surprising part, the first time…
Open a web page and, before you click anything or see a single Allow pop-up, it already knows a fair amount about the machine you are on: how many CPU cores you have, your screen size, your graphics…
We just shipped a Bulk IP Lookup tool — paste up to 50 addresses, get the country, region, city and network (ASN) for each. Building it meant changing something under the hood that had been the same…
A guest can't find the Wi-Fi password, or types the long random string wrong five times, and you get a message at 11 p.m. asking for it. Every host has had this happen. The fix takes about fifteen…
"Fiber," "cable" and "DSL" get thrown around like brand names, but they describe three genuinely different physical ways of getting internet into a building — and the physical difference is what…
A man is sitting in a waiting room, his palms are sweating because he can't explain a gap on his CV — he works back to the small, ordinary moment that caused it. The names and the company are…
A VPN sends your internet traffic through a server somewhere else and encrypts it along the way. Apps and websites then see that server's location instead of yours, and your internet provider sees…
Every disaster story in IT has the same shape: a small wrong assumption, copied into a plan, executed on a Friday. This one got stopped by an intern with a browser and a handful of free lookups. The…
A PTR record maps an IP address back to a hostname. It is the reverse of the A and AAAA records that turn a name into an IP. When a system looks up the name for an IP, it is reading that IP's PTR…
A Wi-Fi QR code turns your network name and password into a square that phones read from the camera. The phone then offers a one-tap prompt to join — no reading out a long password, no typos. iPhones…
At my school there was a boy everyone called “Doctor.” Nobody remembered why. He was not a doctor and he never became one. The name stayed with him anyway.
SSH tunneling (also called SSH port forwarding) is a method of creating encrypted connections between a local computer and a remote server. These connections can be used to secure otherwise insecure…
DNS spoofing, also known as DNS cache poisoning, is a type of cyber attack where malicious actors corrupt a DNS server's cache to divert traffic from legitimate websites to fraudulent ones. This…
Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer and an essential tool for any network administrator, security professional, or IT specialist. It allows you to examine network traffic at a…
Imagine you finished reading a secret letter from a lover. If you throw the letter in the bin, it might be discovered by a blackmailer(cyber criminal) in the future. Tearing up a letter in two won't…
RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) is a networking protocol that provides centralized Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) management for users who connect and use a…
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a physical sciences laboratory and a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce. NIST's mission is to promote…
A password is a single secret. If it leaks — through a breach at any site where you used it, a phishing page, or malware on your device — whoever has it can log in as you. Billions of…
Netflix is a popular streaming service that offers a wide range of movies, TV shows, and documentaries. However, due to licensing agreements, the content available on Netflix varies depending on your…
A Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) is a logical grouping of devices on a network that allows them to communicate as if they were on the same physical network, even if they are not. VLANs are used to…
Webserver access logs are a valuable source of information about the traffic that your webserver is receiving. They can be used to identify potential threats, such as Denial of Service (DoS) attacks…
Security conversations move fast, and the jargon is a barrier whether you're a developer reading a pen-test report, a manager approving a budget, or someone trying to understand a breach notice. This…
A subnet, short for "subnetwork," is a logical subdivision of an IP network that helps improve network performance, security, and management. It allows large networks to be divided into smaller, more…
A TCP/IP packet is a formatted unit of data carried by a packet-switched network. It consists of two main parts: the header and the data payload. The header contains important information such as the…
These two are not the same kind of thing, which is why the comparison confuses people. Alpine is a Linux distribution. BusyBox is a single program that behaves like dozens of Unix commands. Alpine is…
A reverse DNS (rDNS) lookup takes an IP address and asks the DNS system what hostname, if any, has been published for it. It is the mirror image of the everyday forward lookup: forward resolution…
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is the number other machines use to send data back to your device. It works like the return address on an envelope: routers along the way read it to decide where…
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information between autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. It is classified…
Online gaming is a popular pastime for many people. It can be a fun way to relax and unwind after a long day, or a competitive way to test your skills against other players. However, online gaming…
How to find whats your WiFi IP address using Python programming language. This tutorial will show you how to get your IP address using Python.
Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a powerful open-source tool used for computer network discovery and security auditing. It is used by network admins/security professionals to identify devices on a…
A website's domain name (like example.com ) points to one or more IP addresses through DNS. To find those IPs you run a DNS lookup — from a terminal or in the browser. Below are five ways, then a…
→ Use the IP to Timezone tool to look up the time zone, current local time, and UTC offset for your IP or any address you enter.
A regular expression, a.k.a regex (plural regexes) a sequence of characters that define a search pattern. Usually such patterns are used by string searching algorithms for "find" or "find and…
Passwords have a long and storied history, dating back to ancient times. The origin of the password can be traced to the Roman military, where sentries would use a watchword to identify friend from…
For most accounts, a password is still the only thing standing between an attacker and your data. This guide covers how passwords actually get compromised, what a strong password policy looks like…
A WebSocket is a protocol that keeps a single TCP connection open so a browser and a server can send messages to each other at any time. Ordinary HTTP is one-shot: the client asks, the server…
Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) is a method for allocating IP addresses and routing Internet Protocol packets. Introduced in 1993, CIDR replaced the old system based on classful network design…
An IP lookup takes an IP address and returns what public records say about it: which organisation owns the address block, which ISP or hosting provider announces it, an approximate location, and the…
Every device on a network speaks several protocols at once — one to find a route, one to carry the data, one to secure it, one to resolve a name. When a connection fails or a packet capture looks…
A MAC (Media Access Control) address is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. Think of it as a serial number that uniquely identifies…
Imagine your computer is a house on a street filled with similar houses. Each house has a variety of doors, each leading to a different room within. Some doors you can open and enter during certain…
Selenium Grid , is a powerful tool for distributed web testing. Selenium Grid is widely used for parallel test execution across different browsers and operating systems. It is possible to quickly…
Imagine you're playing a game of "Among Us," where the goal is to identify the impostor among the crew members. In this scenario, legitimate crewmates resemble the assigned and recognized IP…
A passphrase is a password made of several words instead of a single short string — for example correct-horse-battery-staple . The point is not that words are magic; it is that a passphrase can reach…
The WannaCry ransomware attack in May 2017 caused an estimated $4 billion in damages worldwide. It utilized a technique known as EternalBlue, exploiting a vulnerability in the Windows SMB protocol to…
A static IP address is a fixed IP address that is assigned to a device and does not change over time. Unlike dynamic IP addresses, which can change each time a device connects to the internet, static…
UDP, or User Datagram Protocol, is a communications protocol that is primarily used for establishing low-latency and loss-tolerating connections between applications on the internet. Unlike TCP, UDP…
TCP/IP has a cryptic name and an important job. Short for Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol , it is the family of networking protocols that lets two or more computers communicate…
An Internet Protocol (IP) address is a unique string of numbers and periods that serves as an identifier for devices connected to a computer network. This numerical label is crucial for the operation…
An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique numerical identifier assigned to every device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. Think of it as your…
A proxy server is a machine that makes requests on your behalf. Instead of your device connecting directly to a website, it connects to the proxy, the proxy connects to the website, and the response…
HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, adding encryption to protect data transmission between web browsers and servers.
DNS, or Domain Name System, is like the internet's phone book. It translates human-readable domain names into IP addresses that computers use to identify each other on the network.
HTTP is the foundation of data communication on the World Wide Web, defining how messages are formatted and transmitted between web browsers and servers.
The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network-layer protocol that carries data between hosts on different networks. It defines two things: the format of a packet (a header plus a payload) and an…
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