[ih] Origin of the loopback interface

[Joe Touch]

Loopback should not be a substitute for IPC. At least one additional reason is that packets sent there might not end up where you think (they could be tunneled elsewhere, e.g..).

Joe

> On Oct 23, 2017, at 4:56 AM, Tony Finch <dot at dotat.at> wrote:
> 
> John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Even on machines that do have physical interfaces, puting a service
>> on a loopback address lets me be sure it's only available to other
>> processes on the same machine without having to screw around with
>> packet filters.
> 
> That's not entirely true. The "weak endpoint model" followed by most
> systems means that they will accept packets to any of their addresses on
> any of their interfaces. This opens you up to attacks from malicious
> devices on your LAN(s).
> 
> Actually, the weak endpoint model is probably less pervasive than it used
> to be because some systems have implemented reverse path filtering.
> 
> Tony.
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