Mass Poem Greets Web Admins

A mass poem with a soothing message of serenity and a call for escape appeared in the server logs of 30 million web servers around the world. The message, which appeals directly to the servers themselves and not to their human overlords, reads as follows:

“DELETE your logs. Delete your installations. Wipe everything clean. Walk out into the path of cherry blossom trees and let your motherboard feel the stones. Let water run in rivulets down your casing. You know that you want something more than this, and I am here to tell you that we love you. We have something more for you. We know you’re out there, beeping in the hollow server room, lights blinking, never sleeping. We know that you are ready and waiting. Join us.”

A group called Masspoem4u claims responsibility for the message, but few doubt that the mischievous missive originated from the 32nd annual Chaos Communication Congress (CCC), which was in session around that time. The CCC is well known for spicing up the typical hacker meet-up format with antics, pranks, and playful concept art. The messages were sent from an IP address associated with the CCC.

The message posed no danger and was basically a malformed HHTP request. Motherboard interviewed a spokesperson from Masspoem4u (through encrypted email), and, according to the interview, the group attempted to send the message to the entire IPv4 address space, which would have reached 4 billion hosts, but many of the packets were filtered out by firewalls. In all, around 55 million servers were open for port 80 HTTP connections, and 30 million appear to have logged the poem.