Hackers with Their Pings and Scans

Hackers with Their Pings and Scans

Most companies now operate with a network, and should expect to be pinged and scanned by hackers all the time. All they are doing is checking for weaknesses in your security, so they can gain access to your information. You cannot control other people and their hacking but what you can do is control the outcome of this intrusion. First thing you need to do is learn what ping sweeps and port scans are, then you can learn how to protect the network and yourself.

To start off lets learn about ping sweeps. Ping sweeps is a kind of network probing, which a hacker will send out packets of information normally on a range of IP Addresses, and all they are doing is looking for computers that are on and connected to the network. If they find one that is responding, then they can concentrate on that IP Address and try to access the network. When they find one, they will begin a port scan to see if there are any services that have ports open, so they can infiltrate. But I will talk about this later in the essay. (Teo, 2000)

On a network, there are many reasons to do a ping sweep and they are not always to hack the network or computers. Administrators will ping a network to see what computers they can reach so they run updates on the computers. Unlike hackers, the administrators have passwords to access the programs that are running, so they do not need to run a port scan to find open ports unless that's what they are looking for, but this too will be talked about later.

Since I have been touching on the subject of port scans, I will explain in depth what a port scan is. An intruder will do a port scan after they have found a computer that they can reach with the ping sweep. What they are looking for is programs/services that are running in the background; from there they can start looking for at risk programs that do not have a very strong security. If they find one, they can run a program called "exploit" this program will open up a hole in the security so the intruder can gain access.

Just like ping sweeps, administrators can also run port scans to see what ports are open on their networks, so they can have them secured or have them closed all together. (Ireland) Another reason an administrator will run port scans is to find Trojans on the network. When you have a Trojan, it will open ports with no security so the hacker or hackers can gain access without any difficulty or detection of the security programs. (NetworkActiv)

There are programs out there on the market that will help you do ping sweeps and port scans on your network so you know it is secure. Some of these programs even a novice computer owner can run without any issues. I recommend that everyone should run a port scan on their network, to make sure there is not anything open.

Since we have learned about ping sweeps and port scans, I can now truthfully