[ale] [OT] Voicepulse question

[Aditya Srinivasan]

Micheal,

On Thu, 9 Dec 2004, Michael H. Warfield wrote:

> 	"Dark addresses" and "dark networks" are terms that are in use by
> some of us and some of us (I for one) run dark networks.  These are also,
> sometimes, referred to as "net telescopes".  They are addresses (public,
> advertised, and fully routable) which have nothing on them and and configured
> to not even return errors or ICMP returns.  Thus they are "dark" or "black
> hole" addresses.  Packets route in, nothing ever comes back.  The largest
> "dark network" I know of, for sure, is Cadia's /8 net telescope (mine
> is a bit less than a /17).  These are what, at least in the security
> community, are referred to as "dark addresses" or "dark networks".
>
> 	I also have some addresses which are "grey".  They respond to
> pings "ICMP ECHO request and reply" but everything else is black holed.
> That's set up for "bump and bite" malware that likes to ping an address
> first and then attempt to connect to a target.  But that's not as
> much in common use as the term "dark net" or "dark address" to refer
> to addresses which are totally black holed and totally dark.

Thanks for the explanation. 

What are dark nets used for, other than for keeping track of viruses/worms 
that attempt to scan IP addresses and make connections.

Who funds this service ? And how do they profit ?

Thanks,
sriad