Port 248: bhfhs — A Ghost in the Registry

Port 248 sits in the well-known ports range (0-1023), officially assigned to both TCP and UDP protocols. The IANA registry lists it as "bhfhs" with a contact named John_Kelly. That's all that remains.

What We Know (Which Isn't Much)

The service name is "bhfhs." The acronym stands for... nobody knows anymore. There's no RFC defining the protocol. No documentation explaining what it does. No software that uses it. The service appears to have been assigned in the early days of Internet port allocation and then simply disappeared.¹

The contact listed in the original assignment was associated with bellhow.com, a domain that no longer provides any information about this service. Whatever "bhfhs" was meant to do, it never gained traction or the documentation was lost.

The Well-Known Ports Range

Port 248 lives in the System Ports range (0-1023), which are assigned by IETF Review or IESG Approval. These ports were meant for services that would become fundamental to Internet infrastructure. Most did—FTP on 21, SSH on 22, HTTP on 80. But some, like port 248, were assigned and then forgotten.²

Getting a port in this range used to mean something. It meant your protocol was important enough, stable enough, widespread enough to deserve a permanent place in the Internet's nervous system. Port 248 got that designation. Then the service vanished.

What Might Be Listening

Because the original service is defunct, port 248 is effectively unassigned in practice. That means:

• Malware has used it. Security databases note that trojans have historically used port 248 for communication, not because the port itself is malicious, but because an unused assigned port makes a convenient hiding place.³
• Custom applications might use it. Developers sometimes repurpose abandoned assigned ports for internal tools.
• Probably nothing. Most systems have nothing listening on port 248.

Checking Port 248

To see if anything is listening on port 248 on your system:

Linux/Mac:

sudo lsof -i :248
sudo netstat -an | grep 248

Windows:

netstat -an | findstr :248

Using Nmap to scan a remote system:

nmap -p 248 -sV <target>

The -sV flag attempts to identify what service is actually running, which can reveal whether it's legitimate software or something suspicious.⁴

Why Ghost Ports Matter

Port 248 is one of hundreds of assigned ports where the service has been lost to time. They're listed in the official registry, but nobody uses them anymore. Nobody remembers what they were for.

This matters because the port registry is supposed to be the definitive record of Internet services. When assignments disappear into obscurity, it creates ambiguity. Is port 248 still reserved? Can I use it for my application? Should firewalls block it by default?

The ghost ports represent the archaeology of the Internet—services that once seemed important enough to deserve permanent addresses, now forgotten. The infrastructure remembers, even when we don't.

The Honest Truth

If you see traffic on port 248, it's not "bhfhs." That service is gone. It's either malware, a custom application, or network scanning. The official assignment exists only as a historical artifact—a name in a registry, a marker of something that once was or was meant to be.

Port 248 is a ghost in the machine. Officially assigned. Practically dead.