Q:

IP address shows up as "Protected"

I was watching network traffic coming over my LAMP server today when I saw this 
> Active Internet connections (w/o servers) Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local
> Address           Foreign Address               State tcp        0    176
> raspberrypi:ssh         >MyMachineName<         ESTABLISHED tcp6      
> raspberrypi:http        protected.hyperfi:57894 SYN_RECV

Usually this is where the IP shows up under "Foreign Address" 
Has anyone ever seen this before? What is protected??

A:

I would guess you are seeing the start of a reverse dns hostname. I would guess some numpty has set it to something like protected.<companyname>.<tld> which has then been truncated.
Assuming you are using netstat you can use the -n option to show numeric addresses rather than attempting reverse dns.
Reverse DNS is sometimes useful but can be highly misleading. IP block owners can basically put whatever they like in there.

