Why did my firewall log stuff from forums.anandtech.com?

[KingNothing]

The firewall has blocked Internet access to your computer (ICMP Unreachable) from forums.anandtech.com (168.143.107.163).

Occurred: 3 times between 1/26/2003 10:44:30 PM and 1/26/2003 10:44:40 PM

I posted my IP address as an FTP mirror in an OT thread, and soon after my firewall logged this. Do the forums scan all posted IPs or something?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

i'm confused by zone alarm's output. did your computer send an icmp unreachable message to forums.anandtech.com, or the other way around?

when you attempt to connect to a remote machine, and the connection can not be made due to whatever routing issues, a router sends you an icmp unreachable message. (i.e. this is not a ping attempt - and a scan would be an insane thing for them to do, plus AFAIK they're running windows, and i dont think many windows people use nmap - AND you'd get alot more warnings if they did scan you )

AFAIK, zone alarm simply drops all packets coming in (i.e. it doesnt respond, so the unreachable message was not sent by you), so that would mean you received this packet from forums.anandtech.com, which means there was some sort of routing issue at that time. who knows why, the internet is a crazy place

 

[KingNothing]

The icmp unreachable was from forums.anandtech.com to me.

So forums.anandtech.com tried to connect to me, and it didn't work, so it sent an icmp packet to me?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Originally posted by: KingNothing
The icmp unreachable was from forums.anandtech.com to me.

So forums.anandtech.com tried to connect to me, and it didn't work, so it sent an icmp packet to me?

right, icmp unreachable is sent as a response. that means that if forums.anandtech.com sent it to you, then you were the one making the request.

A = forums.anandtech.com
B = you
C = router in between

B: hi A, can i see a webpage?
C: i'm sorry, A is not in right now.
B: what did you say C!?!?! don't talk to me, i am zonealarm! i'm gonna tell on you!

 

[Jason Clark]

forums.anandtech.com does NOT send ping or initiate ICMP requests to users, end of story there.