3 ms·

My gut reaction to that is skepticism. I've done basic switch configuration, looked at packets, had to troubleshoot MTU and MRU misconfiguration in commercial

by ssmoot 12y ago

My gut reaction to that is skepticism. I've done basic switch configuration, looked at packets, had to troubleshoot MTU and MRU misconfiguration in commercial switches, etc. Conceptually stuff at that layer is a long ways from the actual content. It's like pointing to a guy walking his dog at the park after noticing a parked car with it's lights on, and saying "there's the owner in the car" vs "there's the owner of the car". It feels, to me, like those sorts of linguistic mistakes must be exceedingly rare? Or maybe the person writing up the statement wasn't the person who generated the notes and they just had a transcription error. I'd buy that I guess.

diminoten 12y ago
Your gut reaction is to lean towards conspiracy rather than a simple typo/transposition in the mind of the FBI agent who wrote the report?
- ssmoot 12y ago
  That's awful snarky, and misses the point entirely. My gut reaction is that if I, as a civilian, were to ask an FBI agent for details about a case, I'm as likely to receive half-truths and lies by omission as anything at all though. So if you want to be pedantic I guess so. I did point out that I'd believe it could just be a transcription error by someone unfamiliar with the subject matter though.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    The point here is that this is nothing more than a simple writing mistake on the part of the FBI. Pretending like there's some conspiracy or parallel construction taking place here is just nonsense and the folks suggesting it are doing so out of irrational fear more so than any actual evidence. Your gut reaction seems to place you in the camp of the conspiracy theorists. That should raise alarm bells for you.
    - ssmoot 12y ago
      > The point here is that this is nothing more than a simple writing mistake on the part of the FBI. You say that like it's fact. But you're assuming. I thought it was noteworthy that I can't recall ever seeing that specific error in the wild. Maybe I just missed it. Maybe it's a lot more common than I imagine. Maybe not. I don't know. Once it was brought to my attention I thought it was noteworthy though. > Pretending I'm not pretending anything. I gave an additional explanation I felt might be plausible. I'm sure there are others. I just doubt the plausibility of the one brought forward. > irrational fear Tomato tomato. There's no evidence it was a writing mistake, but you're presenting it as fact. I guess it all boils down to this: Given domestic spying revelations I think you're extremely naive if you think it's irrational to think that the FBI might be telling less than the whole truth. Your gut reaction puts you in the camp of people who would volunteer information to a LEO. Which I think should raise a lot more alarm bells than me shrugging my shoulders and suggesting I'd need actual evidence before taking the FBI at it's word. The very idea that you would is blissfully naive IMO. But good luck with that. And if you have an point to make, a little less ad-hom and snark (aka Reddittude) would be appreciated. My original comment was a few wonderings-out-loud, including posing a couple questions for discussion. Nothing in there intended to be snarky. If you want to discuss further, it would be nice if you could approach the conversation with the same level of basic respect.
      - diminoten 12y ago
        Sidestepping your bruised ego entirely, the fact that you haven't seen someone mistake an IP header with an HTTP header is a terrible standard with which to judge whether or not such a mistake is possible. This isn't really about you, it's about showing the other folks reading this how nuts you are, and luckily you're doing that for me.
        ssmoot 12y ago
        That's a weird argument (that I never made). Though I have to wonder about that. IPv4 headers and HTTP headers don't much look the same IME (feel free to hit up Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar). As far as "how nuts your are". You seem to be taking this way too seriously. "My gut reaction is to be skeptical" somehow equates to, in your words: * Nuts * Conspiracy Theorist * Nonsense * Irrational Expressing skepticism that the FBI would "tell the whole truth and nothing but", despite high ranking intelligence officials outright lying to congress, and the history of the FBI being a bit checkered... That you think should raise alarm bells. Skepticism. If that's all it takes to be a conspiracy theorist in your book, well sign me up I guess. The outright dismissal that it might just be possible you don't have all the facts (and I'm certainly not claiming I do)... That's an idea you dismiss outright. I have to wonder how you get there. Because if anything here seems irrational, that's what I'd put my finger on. But maybe that's just me.
hueving 12y ago
You must not have used a packet capture tool like wireshark then. Try Wireshark, a packet capture of HTTP traffic will be parsed and you can click through all of the headers of both of the individual packets as well as the HTTP traffic. The difference inside the program is just one layer of clicking. Either way you are extract the IP from headers presented to you in the packet capture.
MaulingMonkey 12y ago
> It's like pointing to a guy walking his dog at the park after noticing a parked car with it's lights on, and saying "there's the owner in the car" vs "there's the owner of the car". So here's a bit of nuance for me. I can parse "the headers of the packets" in one of two ways: 1) For each packet, the header of said packet (clearly referring to the IP layer header) 2) For each packet, the headers of said packet (ambiguous) "The header of a packet" is relatively unambiguous, and akin to your analogy. I would grant this kind of mistake to be rare, although I'm not sure we'd agree on how rare. Certainly not impossibly rare - more common than those spurious 3s in my own writing, and yet we see one of those quite clearly. "The headers of a packet" is more ambiguous. A packet has only one header. The header has options, so that could be what's being referred to. Or it could be more loosely referring to metadata, or headers of another protocol contained within the packet data. I could see myself using this kind of loose terminology quite easily. I'm not a network engineer, I don't do switch configuration, I don't have to get down and dirty with IP layer issues with MTU and MRU misconfigurations, so it's quite possible I'm more prone to this kind of mistake than you are. I'm just a programmer who's occasionally asked to dabble with layer 7 networking stuff, and mostly interact with this when I e.g. fire up Wireshark to debug why my Amazon S3 authentication isn't working, only to discover Unity's WWW class ignored the (HTTP) headers I wanted to send on iOS (explaining why it worked perfectly fine on Windows!)

by ssmoot 12y ago

diminoten 12y ago

Your gut reaction is to lean towards conspiracy rather than a simple typo/transposition in the mind of the FBI agent who wrote the report?

ssmoot 12y ago
That's awful snarky, and misses the point entirely. My gut reaction is that if I, as a civilian, were to ask an FBI agent for details about a case, I'm as likely to receive half-truths and lies by omission as anything at all though. So if you want to be pedantic I guess so. I did point out that I'd believe it could just be a transcription error by someone unfamiliar with the subject matter though.
- diminoten 12y ago
  The point here is that this is nothing more than a simple writing mistake on the part of the FBI. Pretending like there's some conspiracy or parallel construction taking place here is just nonsense and the folks suggesting it are doing so out of irrational fear more so than any actual evidence. Your gut reaction seems to place you in the camp of the conspiracy theorists. That should raise alarm bells for you.
  - ssmoot 12y ago
    > The point here is that this is nothing more than a simple writing mistake on the part of the FBI. You say that like it's fact. But you're assuming. I thought it was noteworthy that I can't recall ever seeing that specific error in the wild. Maybe I just missed it. Maybe it's a lot more common than I imagine. Maybe not. I don't know. Once it was brought to my attention I thought it was noteworthy though. > Pretending I'm not pretending anything. I gave an additional explanation I felt might be plausible. I'm sure there are others. I just doubt the plausibility of the one brought forward. > irrational fear Tomato tomato. There's no evidence it was a writing mistake, but you're presenting it as fact. I guess it all boils down to this: Given domestic spying revelations I think you're extremely naive if you think it's irrational to think that the FBI might be telling less than the whole truth. Your gut reaction puts you in the camp of people who would volunteer information to a LEO. Which I think should raise a lot more alarm bells than me shrugging my shoulders and suggesting I'd need actual evidence before taking the FBI at it's word. The very idea that you would is blissfully naive IMO. But good luck with that. And if you have an point to make, a little less ad-hom and snark (aka Reddittude) would be appreciated. My original comment was a few wonderings-out-loud, including posing a couple questions for discussion. Nothing in there intended to be snarky. If you want to discuss further, it would be nice if you could approach the conversation with the same level of basic respect.
    - diminoten 12y ago
      Sidestepping your bruised ego entirely, the fact that you haven't seen someone mistake an IP header with an HTTP header is a terrible standard with which to judge whether or not such a mistake is possible. This isn't really about you, it's about showing the other folks reading this how nuts you are, and luckily you're doing that for me.
      - ssmoot 12y ago
        That's a weird argument (that I never made). Though I have to wonder about that. IPv4 headers and HTTP headers don't much look the same IME (feel free to hit up Wikipedia if you're unfamiliar). As far as "how nuts your are". You seem to be taking this way too seriously. "My gut reaction is to be skeptical" somehow equates to, in your words: * Nuts * Conspiracy Theorist * Nonsense * Irrational Expressing skepticism that the FBI would "tell the whole truth and nothing but", despite high ranking intelligence officials outright lying to congress, and the history of the FBI being a bit checkered... That you think should raise alarm bells. Skepticism. If that's all it takes to be a conspiracy theorist in your book, well sign me up I guess. The outright dismissal that it might just be possible you don't have all the facts (and I'm certainly not claiming I do)... That's an idea you dismiss outright. I have to wonder how you get there. Because if anything here seems irrational, that's what I'd put my finger on. But maybe that's just me.

hueving 12y ago

You must not have used a packet capture tool like wireshark then. Try Wireshark, a packet capture of HTTP traffic will be parsed and you can click through all of the headers of both of the individual packets as well as the HTTP traffic. The difference inside the program is just one layer of clicking. Either way you are extract the IP from headers presented to you in the packet capture.

MaulingMonkey 12y ago

> It's like pointing to a guy walking his dog at the park after noticing a parked car with it's lights on, and saying "there's the owner in the car" vs "there's the owner of the car". So here's a bit of nuance for me. I can parse "the headers of the packets" in one of two ways: 1) For each packet, the header of said packet (clearly referring to the IP layer header) 2) For each packet, the headers of said packet (ambiguous) "The header of a packet" is relatively unambiguous, and akin to your analogy. I would grant this kind of mistake to be rare, although I'm not sure we'd agree on how rare. Certainly not impossibly rare - more common than those spurious 3s in my own writing, and yet we see one of those quite clearly. "The headers of a packet" is more ambiguous. A packet has only one header. The header has options, so that could be what's being referred to. Or it could be more loosely referring to metadata, or headers of another protocol contained within the packet data. I could see myself using this kind of loose terminology quite easily. I'm not a network engineer, I don't do switch configuration, I don't have to get down and dirty with IP layer issues with MTU and MRU misconfigurations, so it's quite possible I'm more prone to this kind of mistake than you are. I'm just a programmer who's occasionally asked to dabble with layer 7 networking stuff, and mostly interact with this when I e.g. fire up Wireshark to debug why my Amazon S3 authentication isn't working, only to discover Unity's WWW class ignored the (HTTP) headers I wanted to send on iOS (explaining why it worked perfectly fine on Windows!)