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The day my ping took countermeasures

Hacker News · May 24, 2026, 2:02 AM

Key takeaways

  • Once my holidays had passed, I found myself reluctantly reemerging into the world of the living.
  • I was not expecting ping to take countermeasures that early on in a day.
  • Once I got over the initial confusion, I took a deep breath and collected my thoughts.

Once my holidays had passed, I found myself reluctantly reemerging into the world of the living. I powered on a corporate laptop, scared to check on my email inbox. However, before turning on the browser, obviously, I had to run a ping. Debugging the network is a mandatory first step after a boot, right? As expected, the network was perfectly healthy but what caught me off guard was this message:

I was not expecting ping to take countermeasures that early on in a day. Gosh, I wasn t expecting any countermeasures that Monday!

Once I got over the initial confusion, I took a deep breath and collected my thoughts. You don t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out what has happened. I m really fast - I started ping before the system NTP daemon synchronized the time. In my case, the computer clock was rolled backward, confusing ping.

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