Someone on IRC yesterday pointed out an interesting phenomenon that made it to some news services today.

It seems that if you telnet to port 78 or 79 of most Gov't time servers, you will get an amusing little result like this:

D: D: My name is Doris: and my husband's name is David: We come from Denver: and we sell Dates:: 322-586-251-282-774-922-637 $ 0 1654 3000 8 1 0 0

or

W: W: My name is Wanda: and my husband's name is William: We come from Washington: and we sell Water Melon:: 342-819-481-282-802-924-238 $ 0 1930 3000 8 1 0 0

Port 79 may ring a bell with some of you, that's the old "finger" protocol, from the days when the internet was about information wanting to be free.

Here's the explanation, from Judah Levine of the Time and Frequency Divison, NIST Boulder:

1. The first text is a pseudo-random text designed to confuse automated

search engines (note the strategic colons). There are 16 poems and they are sent in a random sequence. The text is derived from a jump-rope game and has no special meaning.

2. The remaining digits provide internal information on the operation of the

server and are used for automated remote monitoring. All NIST servers do this.

3. Most of the digits relate to complicated internal parameters. However,

the first 3 values after the $ sign are easy to explain the first is the overall state of the server (0=ok,>0=various failures) the second is the time since the server was last calibrated (in sec), and the third is the nominal interval between calibrations (in sec) the remaining parameters have to do with the internal clock control of the system.

Rats. No secret codes to speak of.