Some operating systems have attributed special internal meanings to the address.
[3][4] In Linux a program may specify 0.0.0.0 as the remote address to connect to the current host (AKA localhost).
This generally means that no intermediate routing hops are necessary because the system is directly connected to the destination.
[10] In IPv6, the all-zeros address is typically represented by :: (two colons), which is the short notation of 0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000.
In August 2024, researchers from Israeli cybersecurity firm Oligo announced that a security flaw had been discovered in which malicious requests to the 0.0.0.0 address of their target, allowing them to access private resources, such as developer code or internal messages.