Well ... *double sigh*
Since other various people have a shown a gross willingness to obfuscate the
obvious intent of port scanning, I'll respond. When is the last time you ran
a port scan just to make sure someone had a webserver running instead of just
pointing a browser to it? The legitimate way to find whether or not someone
is running a service is to give it a try with a client application. If you
don't have a client app that needs to connect to a server implementing that
port then why do you need to connect in the first place?
Larry Craddock
-----Original Message-----
From: Ansgar -59cobalt- Wiechers [mailto:bugtraq@planetcobalt.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 6:38 PM
To: security-basics@securityfocus.com
Subject: Re: application for an employment
On 2006-03-29 Craddock, Larry wrote:
That may be how you interpret it but I think they're very analogous.
The point is simple ... no one has any legitimate business checking
the status of the doors and windows on my property and no one has any
legitimate business port scanning someone else's network. What
legitimate reason would I have in port scanning your network? Let me
answer that for you ... absolutely none. At best, my answer would be
curiosity and that doesn't qualify as legitimate.
*sigh*
I'd rather stayed out of this discussion, but since various people have shown
a gross ignorance of the technial realities of the 'net I'll throw my 2 cent
in.
The legitimate reason you have is the simple fact that you don't have any
other option of determining what services are available on a given host or
range of hosts. It's absolutely ridiculous to think that one would need
express permission to find out whether a shop is open or not.
Or if there is a shop in the first place.
Of course if your scan breaks something you may (or may not) be held liable
for that, but that's a different story.
FWIW
Regards
Ansgar Wiechers
--
"All vulnerabilities deserve a public fear period prior to patches becoming
available."
--Jason Coombs on Bugtraq
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