What if hackers had to label their own evil traffic?
The Security Flag in the IPv4 Header
An April Fools’ internet standard proposing that hackers politely mark their malicious traffic with an “evil bit”.
Published on 1 April, this official-looking internet document proposes using a spare bit in every internet packet as a security flag. Normal traffic sets it to 0. Packets with evil intent must set it to 1.
Firewalls could then simply block anything with the evil bit switched on. The plan relies entirely on villains being honest about being villains, which is where it runs into trouble.
Cybersecurity, solved, assuming everyone plays fair.