A list of fun destinations for telnet
Posted by tokyobreakfast 2 days ago
Comments
Comment by augusteo 2 days ago
There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.
Comment by nomel 2 days ago
I then made my first email client, then an RFC later, and after browsing the web through telnet for a while, made my first web server!
Comment by JamesTRexx 2 days ago
Comment by sixtyj 2 days ago
Telnet or Mudnet client needed :)
I’ve just poked my schoolmate - he almost didn’t graduate because of MUD.
Comment by MiscIdeaMaker99 2 days ago
Comment by macintux 2 days ago
Comment by iberator 2 days ago
Why do you regret it? People 40+ and juniors can't get jobs now anyways. Even with proper degrees.
Comment by macintux 2 days ago
I know things are brutal out there, but if I find myself unemployed, I’ll need every possible edge I can find. Homelessness is decidedly suboptimal.
Comment by jagged-chisel 2 days ago
So, with the guy looking over my shoulder, I telnet to the email server, list his messages, and discover that there’s an email with an attachment that’s too big for Outlook to handle. Read some basic info from the message so he could confirm that deleting the message was fine - deleted the message, and Outlook worked again.
Dude was thrilled. Fun times.
Comment by tosti 2 days ago
And sending an email without line editing felt much more exciting than a dedicated mail client. Just dig the remote MX, telnet to port 25 and do it by hand. Marvelous!
Comment by chasd00 2 days ago
Comment by ale42 2 days ago
Comment by dec0dedab0de 2 days ago
Comment by lizknope 2 days ago
Comment by nomel 2 days ago
Comment by iberator 2 days ago
I remember grex.org and arbornet.org . My first free Unix shel acccounts hehe. Made friends worldwide.
Comment by BenjiWiebe 1 day ago
Comment by gambiting 2 days ago
Comment by alexjplant 2 days ago
[1] https://archive.org/details/unofficialguidet0000fadi_r0y3/pa...
Comment by shikhar 2 days ago
It's our favorite way of demoing s2.dev, https://x.com/jrdi/status/2014318511120670859
Comment by RGamma 2 days ago
Comment by mghackerlady 2 days ago
Comment by hei-lima 2 days ago
Comment by flufluflufluffy 2 days ago
Comment by iberator 2 days ago
ITs not obscure, not unknown or special - it's the most known talent site on earth.
It was made AFIR to show capabilities of ffmpg ASCII/ANSI renderer.
Real gems are SDF.ORG, TWENEX.ORG, or Cray 1 supercomputer Access, bbses and backdoors.
Ps. Telnet can be run and it is DAILY inside of the telecoms and one of few ways to speak with BSC, RNC, RRUS and individual basebands(even ultra fresh with 5G). All over IP/SEC and isolated networks. You MUST know if you are serious about computer business hehe
AUDIT people also loves it - you can record entire session of Chinese or Swedish engineer doing some new shit to basebands. This or logging entire screen
Don't think it's dead.
Comment by queenkjuul 2 days ago
And it definitely wasn't using ffmpeg, it was bespoke hand-typed ASCII
Comment by iberator 2 days ago
Then:
telnet SDF.org
get freeish forever Unix shell account.
Comment by jamal-kumar 2 days ago
People would sometimes flip out like they had gotten a virus or whatever
Comment by mcculley 2 days ago
Comment by Bondi_Blue 2 days ago
Comment by cl3misch 2 days ago
Comment by sigio 2 days ago
Comment by cl3misch 2 days ago
Comment by queenkjuul 2 days ago
Comment by w4yai 2 days ago
Comment by cmcollier 2 days ago
Hey all, site owner here. Thanks for the visits and all the fun stories! I really miss this era of computing. Feel free to let me know if you have something that should be added to the site.
Here's some site meta-history too:
Comment by antisol 1 day ago
Just fyi, towel.blinkenlights.nl:23 still works for me, though I think maybe that's an IPv6 version, there's a note about ipv6 at the start that I was too slow to read. Maybe it should be re-listed? :)
Comment by mwest 2 days ago
Missed a trick not being able to “telnet telnet.org” though. :-)
Comment by cerebrum01 2 days ago
Comment by mwest 2 days ago
Comment by kmstout 2 days ago
Comment by mmmlinux 1 day ago
Comment by simmons 2 days ago
Comment by api 2 days ago
Not that it buys you anything other than being retro. :)
Comment by m-hodges 2 days ago
Comment by kidbomb 2 days ago
Comment by sigio 2 days ago
Comment by huhtenberg 2 days ago
traceroute:
...
15 213.136.2.6 35.049 ms 34.440 ms 34.338 ms
16 213.136.2.20 34.814 ms 33.359 ms 35.116 ms
17 213.154.229.42 33.837 ms 33.572 ms 34.794 ms
18 213.136.8.188 30.174 ms 28.810 ms 33.674 ms
tcptraceroute ... 23 :
...
15 213.136.2.6 28.626 ms 28.657 ms 28.849 ms
16 213.136.2.20 28.608 ms 28.483 ms 28.515 ms
17 213.154.229.42 27.989 ms 28.058 ms 29.336 ms
18 * * *Comment by sigio 2 days ago
My traceroute [v0.95]
t14 (2a0e:5700:xxxx) -> towel.blinkenl2026-01-27T13:33:52+0100
Keys: Help Display mode Restart statistics Order of fields quit
Packets Pings
Host Loss% Snt Last Avg Best Wrst StDev
1. 2a0e:5700:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 0.8 0.9 0.8 1.2 0.2
2. 2a02:f640:xxxxxx 0.0% 4 8.5 9.3 8.4 11.0 1.2
3. 2a02:f640::1 0.0% 4 8.2 8.8 8.2 9.2 0.5
4. amsix-501.xe-0-0-0.jun1.bit-1.ne 0.0% 4 12.9 13.1 11.7 15.3 1.6
5. e48.leaf-sw2.bit-1.network.bit.n 0.0% 4 10.7 11.2 10.7 11.8 0.5
6. lo0.leaf-sw3.bit-2b.network.bit. 0.0% 4 11.8 12.0 11.8 12.3 0.3
7. 2001:7b8::213:136:2:43 0.0% 4 12.8 12.0 11.2 12.8 0.7
8. deepthought.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 4 12.4 11.8 11.4 12.4 0.4
9. towel.blinkenlights.nl 0.0% 3 11.6 11.8 11.5 12.2 0.4 ..... @@@@@ @@@@@ ...........
...... @ @ @ @ ..........
....... @@@ @ @ .........
........ @@ @ @ ........
........ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ th .......
....... ----------------------- ......
...... C E N T U R Y .....
..... ----------------------- ....
... @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ ...
== @ @ @ @ @ ==
__||__ @ @@@@ @ @ __||__
| | @ @ @ @ @ | |
_________|______|_____ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ _____|______|_________
```Comment by coatmatter 2 days ago
Comment by huhtenberg 2 days ago
Comment by jfalcon 2 days ago
https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/underground/hacking/INTERN...
Too bad mobile killed the dialtone.
Comment by shorden 2 days ago
Comment by tux3 2 days ago
That's a bit like connecting to IRC with netcat. It's easy to do, there's some kind of a retro hacker feel to it, but it's just not very practical.
Comment by anthk 2 days ago
Comment by yaky 2 days ago
WeatherUnderground shut its API down in 2018.
Comment by VMG 2 days ago
Comment by kjs3 2 days ago
Are you being hyperbolic or do you seriously think the attack surface area of ANSI escape sequences is 'much more' than, say, Javascrpt?
Comment by ifh-hn 2 days ago
I don't know the answer but if telnet can directly access the system that seems more dangerous irrespective of the attack surface.
Comment by VMG 2 days ago
The ANSI control characters wield power of a huge stack of not very robust code
Comment by kjs3 1 day ago
And, telnet isn't installed by default on many systems. So...YMMV.
Comment by pards 2 days ago
The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.
Comment by Bender 2 days ago
Comment by drtournier 2 days ago
The one and only. Still online to my surprise.
Comment by tech-no-logical 2 days ago
#set signature="cat ~/.signature && telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl 666 | tail -n3|"
Comment by macintux 2 days ago
Comment by xeyownt 2 days ago
Captcha: Repeat the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.
All my answers failed. I guess I must be a computer.
Comment by xeyownt 2 days ago
- Venera
- Venera 7
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times.
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet three times
- the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet the first spacecraft to land on another planet
- Rosetta
...
Okay found it: Venera Venera Venera
Comment by orthoxerox 2 days ago
The Wi-Fi password is "four words all uppercase, one word all lowercase".
Comment by fer 2 days ago
Comment by sgt 2 days ago
> doom.w-graj.net 666
> Play Doom in the terminal (code and details)
Comment by hei-lima 2 days ago
Comment by cerebrum01 2 days ago
Comment by aprilnya 1 day ago
Comment by degrees57 2 days ago
Comment by garaetjjte 2 days ago
Comment by moonlion_eth 2 days ago
Comment by crowfunder 2 days ago
Comment by moritonal 2 days ago
Comment by ale42 2 days ago
Comment by hahahahhaah 2 days ago
Comment by homeonthemtn 2 days ago
Comment by MiscIdeaMaker99 2 days ago
Comment by tenthirtyam 2 days ago
Comment by phplovesong 2 days ago
Maybe then we just go back to an oldschool text based way of communicating.
No google. No socials. Just text.
Comment by Bender 2 days ago
Comment by akuchling 2 days ago
Comment by jayknight 2 days ago
Comment by VMG 2 days ago
Do you know what the letters in LLM mean?
Comment by phplovesong 1 day ago
If we dont have any of the above the propaganda or AI slop is just not worth it.
This is why having small focused MODERATED communities is the only viable future.
Comment by nhggfu 2 days ago
Comment by fragmede 2 days ago
Comment by fragmede 2 days ago
Comment by n0um3n4 2 days ago
Comment by conesus 2 days ago
Comment by User23 2 days ago
Comment by LightBug1 2 days ago
Comment by dataf3l 2 days ago
Comment by _ache_ 2 days ago
Comment by btheconqueror 2 days ago
Comment by tgv 2 days ago
~/work/...> telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl
zsh: command not found: telnetComment by chasd00 2 days ago
/edit front page of google did this and it worked for me. Need to do a pip install telnetlib3
import telnetlib3
import sys
def simple_telnet_client(host, port=23):
"""
Connects to a telnet server and prints incoming data.
Compliant with RFC 854 (via telnetlib handling of NVTs).
"""
try:
# Initialize connection
print(f"Connecting to {host}:{port}...")
tn = telnetlib3.Telnet(host, port)
# Read and display output indefinitely until connection closes
while True:
# read_eager() reads data already available without blocking
data = tn.read_eager()
if data:
sys.stdout.write(data.decode('ascii', errors='ignore'))
sys.stdout.flush()
# Check if socket is closed
if tn.get_socket() is None:
break
except ConnectionRefusedError:
print("Connection refused.")
except Exception as e:
print(f"An error occurred: {e}")
finally:
if 'tn' in locals():
tn.close()
print("\nConnection closed.")
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Example usage:
# simple_telnet_client("telehack.com", 23)
# Replace with desired host
host = input("Enter host: ")
simple_telnet_client(host)Comment by tgv 1 day ago
Comment by Bender 2 days ago
Comment by tgv 2 days ago
Comment by Bender 2 days ago
This is expected. Telnet is not encrypted and people are discouraged from using the client or the inetd daemon. It is assumed that if someone installs it manually it is more likely they have a reason to do so and hopefully understand the risks. It will always exist in repositories as there are still a myriad of enterprise appliances that use telnet for management and likely will be the case for the foreseeable future.
Comment by fragmede 2 days ago
Comment by MonkeyClub 2 days ago