Ping Sweeps and Port Scan Case Study

Ping Sweeps and Port Scan Case Study

Ping sweeps and port scans are ways to check maintance in a computer and its network. In the wrong hands they can be used for network probing, hacking, or other malicious things. They can use ping sweep to basically see which machines on a network are functioning. The one that is working, they can attack it and work from there. They can use port scans to find out what exactly what services are running. That way they ca see the security holes in the service and exploit them.

My boss has discovered computer activities that can pose a threat to the company’s wellbeing. He told me to investigate it and do research to see if it really is a threat or not.

Ping sweep

People call ping sweep a network probe, a ping packet is sent to a particular IP address. If that address is active, it will send back a report. Ping requests offer other information, such as how long the signal took to get back as well as if there was any packet loss. A variety of commands can be added to the ping request, so it can also send back much more information. It is utilized by a system administrator for diagnosing a network issue or perform network checkups. Ping sweeps are also used by computer hackers, those seeking to break into a network, to see what computers are active so they know where to concentrate their attacks.

The word ping came from sonar technology. It is one of the ways submarines work to detect objects in water. A sound packet is sent out and if there is an object in the way, the sound packet comes back, and is usually picked up as a “pinging” sound when received.

One of the most popular ping sweep programs is called Fping. Fping is a tool that can be used for conducting ping sweeps. fping takes a list of IP addresses and sends ping packets to them. Unlike normal ping, fping sends one ping packet to one IP address, and then proceeds immediately to the next IP address in immediate way. Fping can use a list of addresses from a file so...