Port 3459: TIP Integral — Registered, Forgotten, Repurposed by Malware

What Port 3459 Is

Port 3459 sits in the registered port range — ports 1024 through 49151, administered by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). These ports aren't reserved by the operating system the way well-known ports (0-1023) are. Any process can open them without elevated privileges, which is why they attract both legitimate software and opportunistic malware.¹

IANA lists port 3459 as assigned to a service called TIP Integral on both TCP and UDP.² Beyond the name, there is essentially no public documentation of what TIP Integral was, who built it, or what it did. It's a registration without a record — a name in a table with no story attached.

The Eclipse 2000 Connection

What port 3459 is known for, in security circles, is the Eclipse 2000 trojan — a remote access tool that circulated in the early 2000s and used this port as its command-and-control channel.³ Eclipse 2000 was typical of that era's RAT (Remote Access Trojan) ecosystem: it would open a listening socket on port 3459, wait for its operator to connect, and hand over control of the infected machine.

The Sanctuary malware has also been documented using this port.⁴

Neither is a current, active threat in any meaningful sense. They're relics. But their association with port 3459 is why security scanners still flag unexpected activity here.

What This Port Tells You About the Port System

Most people assume every port number means something — that behind each one is an active protocol with documentation and a purpose. The reality is messier. The registered port range contains thousands of entries for software that was abandoned, companies that dissolved, and projects that never shipped. TIP Integral is one of them.

The port system is a living document with a lot of dead entries. Port 3459 is a small example of how registration and relevance can come apart completely.

How to Check What's Using Port 3459

If you see traffic on port 3459 on your network, the first question is what process opened it. Standard tools:

On Linux/macOS:

# Show what process is listening on port 3459
ss -tlnp | grep 3459
# or
lsof -i :3459

On Windows:

# Show listening processes with PIDs
netstat -ano | findstr :3459
# Then look up the PID
tasklist | findstr <PID>

Unexpected listeners on this port warrant investigation — not because Eclipse 2000 is a current threat, but because unassigned ports being used by unknown processes are always worth understanding.