The World of Crazy URLs .. Digg.com = 1086311198

We've all had the spoof emails with the bogus links in to Halifax.co.uk. I received one this morning which told me that my HSBC account was going to be frozen. I got really excited, because I didn't even realise I had an HSBC account.

Anyway the link that they wanted me to click on went something like this:-

<a href="http://9991169989/intro/.hsbc.co.uk/1/2/pib-home.html">http://hsbc.co.uk/1/2/personal/pib-sc</a>  <!--( I changed this number)-->

It would look quite ok to some people, particularly as it has only one address in it. After all, I have seen loads of these that have an IP address followed by the banks address, they are easy to spot.

I pulled out the http:// followed by the number and put that in the browser. WOW something came up!

Well, I thought!! How did they get a number with no .co.uk or .com after it !! I want one of these!

Had they found another registry, or was this just a way to convert an IP address to a number?

Then I started changing the numbers and noticed that the ip address changed. I soon worked out the addresses of our web servers:

http://1342528246 and http://1467335231 by using a series of Ping statements. (am I sad or what!?)

You can do it for any IP address.

GeekZilla.co.uk	1467335231	http://1467335231/
Digg.com	1086311198	http://1086311198/

How to do it

Firstly, it must be a site that defaults to the IP address.

Get the IP address.
Hex each segment.
Join the answer as an 8 digit Hex number.
Convert it to Decimal and there you are.
You can then add /dirname/docname etc if you wish.

Example

Digg.com = 64.191.203.30 ..

Convert each segment of the IP Address to Hex 64.191.203.30 = 40.BF.CB.1E
Type the whole number into calc.exe with no seperators i.e. 40BFCB1E
Convert it to Decimal ... presto! .. 1086311198
Type that in your browser and you have Digg.com.

So... Digg.com = 1086311198

Which ends up as...

Summary

So it is not another registry that has sprung up, it is simply another way of looking at an IP address.

Why would you want to use it? The answer to that is "probably not", unless you were trying to impress someone or trying to trick them. For me, it is just a "nice to know" and I hope it is for you too.