Tailscale hid its own name inside the IPv6 address of every ts.net domain
Tailscale's DNS IPv6 spells out "Tailscale"
A Reddit user spotted an easter egg while checking DNS settings: the IPv6 prefix for Tailscale's ts.net domains contains 7a:115c:a1e, which reads as "Tailscale" in the same calculator-spelling trick geeks used in the 90s. Commenters note those first three blocks define the whole ts.net domain, so every tailnet address starts the same way.
The IPv6 contains "7a:115c:a1e", which quite obviously spells out "Tailscale" (7a115ca1e) like the type of text you used to type on a calculator to spell funny words.
- DaSHacka
Related: the name for your Tailnet is randomly-generated from a list of 'tails', and a list of 'scales' in the format `<a tail>-<a scale>.ts.net`.
Many puns and easter-eggs in both! Recommend giving it a quick glance, some are pretty fun. Some examples include 'fable' as a 'tail' (IE 'tale'), and 'universe' as a 'scale'.
Words can be present in both lists when the entity is applicable to both a tail and a scale, so a tailnet named `koi-koi.ts.net` is theoretically possible too.
Found out about it after I randomly lucked into rolling 'miku' as my 'tail' when first creating my account :)
- tzs
To take it to the next level, try to get a matching IPv4 address and company phone number.
It is theoretical possible because many IP address parsers accept not only a.b.c.d form of IPv4 address, but also a.b.c (8 bit a, b, 16 bit c) and a.b (8 bit a, 24 bit b). (Also a, with 32 bit a).
For example on MacOS and Debian pinging these all ping the same thing: 1.0.0.1, 1.0.1, 1.1, 16777217.
If your US phone number has an area code and prefix that each fit in 8 bits and the area code doesn't match one of the first bytes that has a special meaning in IPv4 then you could have phone number areacode-prefix-number also work as IP address areacode.prefix.number.
- ink_13
Facebook does this too:
$ dig +short AAAA facebook.com
2a03:2880:f10e:83:face:b00c:0:25de
- abelleisle
I do the same thing for my homelab's ULA.
My domain is `bitcicle.com`, so I use the internal ULA prefix: `fddf:b17c:1c1e::`.
Makes it easier to remember.
- himata4113
This makes me think about something. Why don't we support this as a standard?
It would be nice if local ipv6 spelled out "local"
imagine this: local::homelab in your url-bar just working
edit: Yes I know DNS solves this problem, but it would be very neat non the less, making 128bits of packet overhead actually serve a purpose without any software glue.