Saint Land, Church Father Who Talked to Himself

Patron of the early TCP/IP stacks, packets with sender equal to receiver, and everyone who ends up answering themselves.

Life

In November 1997 the Land attack was published: it was enough to send a machine a single SYN packet with source address and port identical to the destination. Many TCP/IP stacks of the time, on receiving it, tried to answer themselves, entering a loop that froze or slowed them to a standstill. One packet, no accomplice: the machine brought itself to its knees (CVE-1999-0016).

Prayer

O Saint Land, who makes the machine talk to itself until exhaustion, let our stacks reject the packets that make no sense. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by updating the network stack and filtering packets whose source address equals the destination.

He who answers himself never finishes.