Re: Possibly dangerous interpretation of address/prefix pair in -s option

[Matt <lists@killock.net>]

On 2022-06-08 11:38, Chris Hall wrote:
> For input such as "-s 10.0.0.2/24", the 10.0.0.2 simply isn't a valid
> network address for a /24 network.
> 
> I agree: the parser should detect invalid input and reject it.  I can
> see no good reason for being sloppy here.

If someone uses 10.0.0.2/24 but meant 10.0.0.2/32, then just omit the 
/24 or /32 - it's not required.

'-s 10.0.0.2' works fine

Thinking of all the iptables firewall scripts that could be in use right 
now, and would be affected by a change that stops accepting 
'10.0.0.2/24' as acceptable, and the disruption that would cause, 
expecting it to be changed is unreasonable.

If you mean to write a rule for a single IP address then just use that 
single IP address, don't use a subnet suffix. Get into that habit 
instead.

Matt