Info Security

The Danger of Ping Sweeps and Port Scans

Devry University

The Danger of Ping Sweeps and Port Scans

In relation between business and technology today, it is no question that potential illegal access into company material must be a primary concern. Through research, I’ve found that two very common and potentially damaging concerns are referred to as Ping Sweeps and Port Scans. Both of these activities are used to assist an attacker in gaining access to a system, but do not function exactly the same. Even a somewhat greater concern is that both practices are fairly common, or well-known. Through my research I’ve found the potential danger to our company from Ping Sweeps, Port Scans and what we can do to prevent becoming victims of attacks.

Ping Sweeps, as defined by Network Dictionary in 2007, are “a basic network scanning technique used to determine which of a range of IP addresses map to live hosts (computers).” Ping Sweeps themselves can also be a helpful diagnostic for network administrators. Anyone familiar with networking will definitely be familiar with the term Ping, as it is a commonly used diagnostic tool. A Ping is when a message is sent from one device to another, and if the other device is functioning, it will return a reply. Ping Sweeps are used by attackers to sending these Pings to multiple devices, and then by the responses it receives, the attacker can determine which devices are active. This could be one of the first steps to an attacker gaining access to your device. The mere familiarity and ease of this technique makes it very common, and potentially threatening.

The most common probing tool used is a Port Scan. They are used by potential attackers to find services running on a particular device. Port Scans, like Ping Sweeps, first search for a device that is active. After finding an active device, it proceeds to scan the device for an open port. Once they find an open port, an attacker can see what service is running on...