On January 14, 2026, global telnet traffic observed by GreyNoise sensors fell off a cliff. A 59% sustained reduction, eighteen ASNs going completely silent, five countries vanishing from our data entirely. Six days later, CVE-2026-24061 dropped. Coincidence is one explanation.
The pattern points toward one or more North American Tier 1 transit providers implementing port 23 filtering
These days, not really, except that netcat has wider capabilities and so often triggers security alarms when used.