Date: Tue, 26 Dec 1995 14:37:19 +0100 From: "Julian Stacey jhs@freebsd.org" <jhs@vector.enet> To: hackers@freebsd.org Cc: postmaster@freebsd.org Subject: Faking the IP address for a temporarily dead host Message-ID: <199512261337.OAA09011@vector.enet>
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-------- Hi FreeBSD people, What would be the technical ramifications of faking an IP address to be that of a friend's FreeBSD system that has temporarily died ? ( presumably mail for the users on that box is currently piling up in sendmail queues around the world (inc. freefall)). Background: The friend's host died before 17:30 GMT+01:00 21 or 22 Dec. All my mail between then & ~20:00 GMT+01:00 25 Dec. was forwarded to that host from freefall (I removed freefall .forward then ), I don't know yet if the dead hosts's /var/mail/jhs died with system, (ie dont know if it was a disc crash, or mere power failure) Friend's message on my answerphone got only truncated details. I can't ping the dead host (of course). The dead host was not a web server or ftp server etc, so I don't think anything too dramatic would occur. Whilst I don't want to do this without the dead host's administrator's permission (by phone I guess, he's not back till next week, & not at his host till 8th Jan), I am wondering what would be the ramifications of me resetting my IP to his host, rebooting, & connecting to the net for a few hours, & sending short dummy mails to jhs@freefall etc, to trigger the sendmail daemons to flush their spool queues of all mail piling up for all users @dead-host ? Obviously I'd have to check my .forwards & /etc/aliases here so no loops started, & create passwd & alias entries to accept mail destined for users @dead-host, also I should make sure not to collide with dead box's IP address when it comes back to life 8th Jan or after. Another (unconnected) friend reckons DNS would prevent me doing this, but I'm not clear why (I admit I still need to read my DNS & Bind Nutshell :-) I thought most of the routing tables on the net were automatically maintained these days, not hand maintained, I would guess if I ftp freefall, I would appear in its route state tables, even if I hadnt config my routed to boradcast my hosts availability ?. It's not something I want to rush into, and not without dead-host's administrator's permission but if he's got serious hardware problems, I'd like to be able to offer help, if viable, to the extent of host masquerading, (& then loaning him my spare machine after the masquerade, 'till he fixes his host). Comments on viability or otherwise appreciated, Thanks :-) Julian -- Julian H. Stacey jhs@freebsd.org http://www.freebsd.org/~jhs/
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