Case insensitive Map key - code smell

Here's the bug that had me working today (a Sukot holiday):

_myMap.put(key.toLowerCase())
...
_myMap.get(key) // without lower casing the key.

At first you might think of this as a common human error, but I claim that it's no less of a code smell:

Why trust yourself to always remember to lower/upper case all of the interactions with the map? What about trusting others?
So, instead of using a HashMap, use an Apache CaseInsensitiveMap that nicely and safely encapsulates this key's case concern.

P.S.
I would expect CaseInsensitiveMap to become a part of the Java SDK.

My attempts with IP Spoofing – Revisited

One upon a time (Jan 2009) I've written this post, basically saying that you're not likely to be able to spoof IP address over the Internet.
Turns out I was dead wrong!

It happened so the very experienced Mr Filipe, from Brazil, came across the post and left me a comment saying that Spoofing over the internet is quiet possible.
I replied surprised, and after a number of comments ping-pongs, we started chatting online, and Felipe had agreed to give me a live spoofing demo:
On my end, I've configured my home router to forward TCP/UDP packets to my desktop, where I ran a wireshark network capture to monitor any incoming packets.
Then Felipe sent a burst of packets from random IP source addresses. Proving me that IP spoofing over the Internet is a reality indeed.

(What do you think? Isn't this kind of stuff is what makes the Internet so amazingly wonderful? two people from two different parts of the world, united by joint interest and kindness :))

So, Thank you Filipe!

A few notes on why spoofing might *not* work:

1. According to Filipe, the recipient's ISP is much more likely to block the spoofed packet, than the sender's ISP. For example if the recipient's ISP see a bogon source IP.
   That's a bit counter-intuitive, because, assuming the ISPs really do care about preventing spoofing, it's a very easy job for the sender's ISP to tell if the packet's source IP is one of the IPs that it handed out to customers, or moreover, to the particular customer (sender).


2. If you are behind a NAT device, then any source address you are planning to use (be it spoofed or real) will be overwritten by the NAT anyway, so make sure you are on a real public IP.


3. No reason to get excited. TCP spoofing is very limited as you won't make it across the TCP handshake, because the recipients will send their ACK,SYN response to the spoofed IP, which you probably don't have much control over.
   In a LAN things are a bit different, if you can manipulate the recipient's ARP table to think that the spoofed IP MAC address is yours. I haven't dag deep.

Feel free to comment.