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Law Review Article Says Port Scanning Illegal
Anonymous Coward writes: "The Journal of Technology Law and Policy has a good article on computer security and privacy. If you ignore the more metaphorical crap at the beginning of the article, the author marches through some laws that apply to the Internet and shows how they apply and why his way of deciding what kind of access to a computer breaks the law and what kinds don't is better. (Its based on property and expectations of privacy.) It's interesting to see the computer security from a lawyer's point of view. Especially interesting are his claims that using nmap is illegal, despite the VC3 v. Moulton case. I'm not sure I agree with him, but he definitely makes a pretty sobering case." Actually, I think the metaphors throughout this piece (not just at the beginning) are what make it interesting, and a big component of law is dealing with metaphors. This piece also collects in one place a lot of the cases dealing with computer law.
(1)Lack of security is an excuse to break in.
How so? I was arrested when I was 15 for going in a a place of business at 11pm, even though the door was unlocked. It was still Breaking & Entering.
I think the whole portscanning thing comes down to intent.
What about machines you 0wn, but don't own?
Are you arguing that once microsoft has given you something for free (an MP3 encoder) the should be required to continue to give it to you for free? That's all this Windows XP flap was EVER really about; MS didn't want to pay royaltees on the Frauenhofer encoder, so they just stopped including it. You are still free to obtain an encoder from other sources.
I also don't understand your distinction between "private" and "company-owned". Generally, in the US, companies ARE privately owned. It's called capitalism. You may have heard of it. Then again, judging from your posts to slashdot, maybe you haven't.
As long as you insist on confusing notions of private vs corporate, tangible vs nontangible, and being wrong vs being different from how you'd do it, you will continue to be confused about why the world is the way it is, as well as sound like a total cunt.
(Hint: the compelling argument re: OEMs and Windows is that if OEMs don't like the terms under which MS sells Windows, they can choose not to buy it. They can sell bare machines, they can sell Free operating systems, they can bundle BeOS, or they can even take their capital investment into an industry that isn't so controlling)
You don't have to worry about what your terms mean in programming, because you're using a language in which there is no ambiguity in meaning.
You clearly have never had to work with CmdrTaco's perl, or have ever glanced Rasterman's C.
Have a good'one *grin*
The story was submitted to /. by an AC (as is, ironically enough, this response =) ). Did you stop to think for a minute that:
/.'s submission queue is possibly backlogged a (day/week/month) so things show up later here than at k5?
a) The story was possibly submitted by the same person?
b)
Sheesh.
And see which windows and doors are open.
"But officer, he gave me permission to enter his house by leaving that third-story window open. Says so, right here in this posting he made on Slashdot. If he'd meant to keep me out, he wouldn't have had windows, or doors."
Do you understand what a portscan actually is?
When you scan a port, you send it a packet, and you see what the response is. When you test a doorknob to see if it is unlocked (as in the statement you discounted), you are also actively doing something and checking the result.
If portscanning was "looking", you would be able to tell whether or not a port was open without sending a packet to the host, much like you would be able to tell if a door was unlocked without touching it (which, incidentally, you can't from outside, generally...)
So, in summary, you really don't know what you're talking about.
What are the IP addresses of the machines you admin? I'd like to see if you patch them.
- A.P. (I have no sympathy for admins who don't patch their machines and people who don't make backups.)
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Poor analogy. What is nmap stealing when it performs connection attempts? What is it smashing?
- A.P.
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I doubt it. If I run a public web server, I've given implicit permission for people to use it (attach to port 80 and make HTTP requests). That would include properly written spiders (ie ones that don't DOS the site).
But in running that web server, I haven't given people permission to rattle around looking for RPC daemons, mail daemons, IMAP... you get the idea.
Yup. Google only searches things when there are links from other pages or when you ask it to. If it gets a dead site, it marks it and doesn't return. And I don't know about you, but most people I know don't find web sites by portscanning netblocks, but by following links given them through various sources. That's how the web works, you know.
You can have some of it when you pull your head out of your arse.
This is a big change from how things work now.
I have no problem with companies' own servers being very forcefully protected, or with extreme limits being placed on what I can do to or with THEIR computers- if the SAME LIMITS apply to what they can do with mine! This has often been a concern of mine. I see my hard disks as private property, and just because I run a program does not mean my expectation is to allow the software to run completely amok and cause problems while 'protecting' itself. That would be like saying if you let someone into your house, they are allowed to steal or wreck everything you own. Hey, you let 'em in!
The real world is more complicated than that. And I'm delighted to see the real world beginning to enter into software issues too.
Do you want to be able to say "Trust me" to the RIAA, MPAA etc ad nauseam when they want to get permission to log onto your computer and scan it for copyrighted material? Do you want an ironclad legal defense stating that they have no business snooping around your property? Do you want to be able to run software they might be involved with, and not risk the possibility that they will use it as a trojan to hunt down copyrighted material and delete it or report you to the police?
Do you want to be able to say "Trust me" and be certain that if they then try to spy on you, infiltrate your system, or destroy your data, that THEY will be the criminals in that case?
Or would you like them to be able to do all this and then turn you over to the authorities if they find anything they think is incriminating?
Our 'cyberspace property rights' are way weaker than physical property rights. Having this change is not necessarily a bad thing.
The justice system of the United States Of America already disagrees with you on the last bit. Just because said system also permits appeals doesn't change that. And selling bare machines is _strongly_ discouraged- by Microsoft. You may not want to know what they can do to you if you persist in doing so.
I knew perfectly well I was pushing it with my first example, hence the 'or more plausibly'. It's pretty unlikely that they will ever not be allowed to cease supporting stuff. It is, however, possible that they will not be allowed to gratituously break stuff that used to work- and this is precisely what they are in the process of doing.
Astroturf much? ;)
It's a bit of a red flag for me simply that you use the term 'the free market' twice. Sounds like a libertarian perspective, and you're not necessarily going to see it backed by the courts. It's pretty well accepted that limitations on this consumer ability to examine are expected- that the legal system tries to strike a balance between the wish of a seller to con the buyer, and the wish of a buyer to 'make a rational choice' (HA!).
By the same token, it's pretty well accepted that 'consumers' can't even voluntarily waive their rights completely- if you say "here's three cents off, and if it kills you we're not liable!" it won't stand up in court if the thing does kill somebody, because people don't go around making rational decisions all the time. For this reason, post-sale control of goods and services has an uphill battle if it wants to get to where the copyright lobby wants it- and in fact book publishers have already lost this battle, which is why there's case law on first sale rights.
The only thing that _can_ affect corporate entities is law and terrorism. But law _does_ affect corporate entities. You're personalising them and that's a mistake. If law says they've gotta do something, they may weasel but it's really not in the interests of the shareholders for them to try to overthrow the law itself- bad PR, poor chances, not a win. It's the legacy of Microsoft that's confused you about this, because Microsoft is an insane corporation and would _much_ rather overthrow law and justice than please the stockholders. MS has control issues. You can't generalise that to all corporations.
This is a _good_ article. Law and justice that doesn't have two sides is no law at all... this article goes a long way towards presenting a concept of digital property rights that is _local_.
There is a lot of money and power behind content creators, copyright holders etc. saying "we own this, it is OUR property, therefore we get to scan your computer, send back information to the mothership, and if you are a criminal we get to delete stolen goods off your hard drive, you pirate you! You miscreant!"
The thing is, _law_ sees this and comes back with "If you're saying that is property, wouldn't the person's hard disk be property too? As in 'not yours', as in 'you are a guest but they bought it and own it and live in it'?"
That's the beauty of law and justice- it balances, in time. The inevitable result of pushing for extensive 'property' law regarding copyright etc. is to also cast light on the subject of what kind of property a person's datasphere is.
I even wrote an essay on this in November 1998: it's at http://www.airwindows.com/fiction/essays/Hotel.htm l. When you operate a computer it is like you are moving your stuff around on virtual property: you put something somewhere. Does a company have a right to move it to somewhere else? To pile stuff next to it obscuring it? To paint it a different color, or dust it off? To remove, discard it, set it on fire, impound it as evidence?
The fact that all of this seems totally permissible only shows that law hasn't begun thinking about these issues yet.
You can't have it both ways- if I am forbidden even to portscan a company, then the company is forbidden to go over _my_ computer either. It's analogous. If we're tightening the protections for company-owned 'cyberspace' we're also laying a precedent for tighter protections on privately owned cyberspace.
In the future it may be ILLEGAL for Microsoft to shut off the mp3 encoding in its software and force people to migrate to WMA- or more plausibly, it may be ILLEGAL for them to take a WMA file that was once functional and render it nonfunctional arbitrarily if you don't cough up a license fee. It may also be illegal for them to place restrictions on OEM desktops- on the basis that they make the building materials, the OEM builds the house, the customer buys it and moves in. There is no compelling argument that they must be able to prohibit the OEM from decorating the 'house' as they see fit.
Very interesting stuff in this article, and grounds for hope :)
As someone else mentioned (but I feel I must reiterate), making portscanning illegal isn't going to stop portscanning. Besides, it's still going to be a lot of work either manually sifting through logs and collecting lists of scanning addresses, or writing utilities to do the collection automatically. (Or costly money-wise, if you are an NT sysadmin and like to purchase everything you use in a box.)
Also, what about people who portscan from foreign countries? How exactly is a law here going to stop them? The systems I run see regular netblock scans from addresses in China, Korea and other far-Eastern as well as some European nations. (Italy is a common origin.)
Also, what about sysadmins portscanning their own systems? If portscans aren't legal, how can I externally analyze my own systems? Am I then a criminal if I scan my own boxen? Where do we draw the line?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Ok, let's pretend I'm really filthy rich and looking for a bank to put my money.
If I ask to see their security, chances are the bank will be more than willing to do so. If I suggest testing their security for weak points, they may also be willing to work with me if I'm worth a really filthy amount.
If however I do so by attempting to break in to all the banks in town to see which ones have weak security, witout asking first.
Would it come as any surprise to end up in jail?
I understand your point, but you need to ask permission. If permission isn't granted, then maybe you should move on to the next provider, until you actually find one who will let you.
Guns don't kill people.
It's the damn bullets!
Did it ever occur to you that maybe the people who post stories don't check k5 every time they post a story? They post stories off the submission queue...if you want to complain, complain to the person who submitted it.
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
I have been known to portscan port 80 on a slow day to see if there are any local webpages on the network. Same with newservers and other interesting ports of communication. Looks like a walk through the neighborhood to visit interesting characters will soon be outlawed.
Shame people don't believe in locks to spoil it for those of us who like to visit those who wish to open up communication ports to be friendly.
Guns can also be used for hunting purposes for us that prefer eating tasty animals that haven't been pumped up with steriods and antibiotics, raised on cruel slaughterfarm camps. What a life for a cow. I prefer wild deer
Portscanning can also be used for searching sites that haven't been shamelessly advertised through marketing. Such rare gems are often found to be representative of local communities. I prefer folks who take the initiative to put up something personal, but haven't spammed their links everywhere. You'd be surprised at what you can find through portscanning httpd, finger, ntalk, etc...
The policy for specifying what is allowed and not allowed is simply closing the damn port in the first place.
I want some of what you're smoking.
--
Niklas Nordebo | niklas at nordebo.com
And outlawing port scanning would help you how? This is a very flawed argument. Breaking into your computer is illegal in and of itself, port scanning notwithstanding. There is a huge difference between checking whether a port is open and actively trying to exploit a security hole. You are trying to blur the distinction between the two.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Who said anything about thousands of computers? I sure didn't. Please do not misrepresent what I said. Now regarding the permission, that is an interesting question. I do concede that this is not clear cut. You claim that I have no permission to port scan a compuer on a public network. Where did you get that idea? Do I have a permission to make http/ftp/whatever connection to the same computer? Who establishes these permissions? How can I know them in advance? If no one has permission to access that computer, why is it on a public network?
It's sort of like the difference between sending an email to your friend, or sending thousands of emails to thousands of people you don't know asking them if they'd like to "MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A WEEK WORKING FROM HOME!!1!". Or do you think that spamming is ok too?
That is a very interesting argument, but what does it have to do with port scanning? Nothing! Clearly you have nothing intelligent to say on the subject so you decide to appeal to emotion instead. I would be glad to debate the subject of port scanning, but please do stick to it and use logic, not rhetoric to back up your claim.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Again you are trying to blur the issues. Port scanning != attacking. Breaking into a computer is illegal in and of itself regardless of whether port scanning is involved. You are trying to argue that a port scanner automatically attacks. Repeat after me: attacking a computer causes damage; port scanning does no harm. These are separate actions!
It reminds me of the argument MPAA lawers were making against DeCSS. They would have us believe that a ripped DVD automatically puts itself on the internet for everyone to download, and distributes itself to millions of people. But EFF successfuly (or so it seems...) showed that the two actions are separate. Distributing a movie is illegal in and of itself regardless of whether DeCSS is involved. Ripping a movie for the purpose of backup, or storage on different medium (aka "space shifting"), or making clips is not. (Though this has nothing to do with port scanning I couldn't help but notice the similarity in the line of reasoning).
And why should I be held to a higher standard than the other posters who are talking about "rattling doors", "opening windows", "ringing doorbells", "crawling in attics", etc, etc, etc?
I didn't say that. The same is applicable to anyone who attempts to win an argument with rhetoric instead of logic.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
I think your's is a bad analogy. Port scanning is much less intrusive than what you describe.
:)
I like the door knocking ananlogy... on the scale of 1024 doors
Steve
In a single FTP session, you can end up using any free port on the machine to do the file transfer.
But that conversation is part of the FTP session, and is (or can be) logged as such. You wouldn't connect to a random port without requesting a file transfer from ann FTP server, assuming I even have an FTP server running on my computer, which I don't.
The list the guy mentions isn't meant to be an exhaustive list of services which are considered "public". Replace the list with the phrase "commonly provided services". And interpret the names of the services, instead of the ports for the names. If you want to run your telnet port on 23000 instead of 23 to avoid a firewall somewhere, more power to you. And no company would provide a service without also providing a direct way to the service, unless they intend for that service to remain undetected, in which case it's probably not a service that should be running anyway (like the telnet port at 23000 to avoid the firewall).
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
A port scan can be defined as any exploration, brute-force or directed, of the available services on a computer not belonging to you with the intent of utilizing those services is a manner not intended by the provider of those services.
Does that make sense?
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
IANAL.
the "expectation of privacy" doesn't mean shit. There is nothing that actually PROTECTS our privacy. We just assume that laws should... Tough shit for us I suppose.
yep, you cannot do that. If you don't trust them, go somewhere else. You don't own the machines, you cannot scan them.
but no one is looking for the "main" entrance are they? They are looking to see if the "Staff Only" doors are unlocked when no one is around..
Its not really like trying the windows as much as checking which windows are there... Connecting and checking for various vulnerabilities is more like trying the doors to see if they are locked. I sometimes portscan a server to see what serives they have open, good example: portscanning an IRC server to see what ports they open so you can get alternate ports to use to connect to irc.
Guns DO NOT KILL PEOPLE, they just sort of lay there and do NOTHING, sometimes they rust abit if they are feeling ambitious, but they NEVER KILL PEOPLE. People HOWEVER, DO KILL PEOPLE, and SOMETIMES THEY USE a GUN TO DO IT....sometimes they JUST BEAT MORONS TO DEATH with a handy blunt object but that is neither here nor there.... I too feel VEDRY strongly about this....
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I've seen and participated in several projects that port scanned as a method of network mapping.
:)
My analogy is more like a knock at your door...
Put up a fire wall (no tresspasor sign) if it bothers you
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Huh? Try making some sense.
Every crime begins in the mind. Should minds be against the law?
Anybody who does a portscan is doing it because they want to hack your system. There is no other reason to do one.
And what about the suggestion that portscans should be used to verify the security claims of ISPs before subscribing.
I'll bet you believe in "guilty until proven innocent" too, don't you?
Not necessarily.
and such people will call the police. The police might take you downtown and have a talk with you.
I would consider that kind of police action to be abuse of power. We obviously have different ideas of what appropriate governmental power is.
And if port scanning is "done from the sidewalk"?
Of course, a bank is not a TCP port, and a port scan is not "rattling the front door". These analogies are completely incorrect.
Of course, much of the Internet *was* built with tax money (DARPA). But that wasn't really what I was aiming at. If you are standing on a highway (or even in your front yard) you are still in full public view.
You're missing the point. This discussion is about making the use or possession of a portscanning tool *illegal*. The government will *not* say, "So long as you aren't using it for some nefarious purpose, it's OK." The government doesn't work like that. They're likely to do something competely stupid like outlawing system calls related to TCP or some such nonsense.
Furthermore, there's a legal principle to be stood for here. A tool that *could* be used for immoral purposes but doesn't *have* to be is not supposed to be illegal. Like DeCSS, for example.
Who said anything about loitering? If I walk by your house and look at it, the Police have no business bothering me.
I did.
The analogy in question is snooping around the house, taking pictures, rattling doors etc.
I'm sorry but that simply is *not* an apt analogy.
Who decides who can own a portscanner? Under what circumstances? What do you do about people who write their own? Do you outlaw the distribution of Free Software that has this capability?
Since when does a portscan damage your machine? This is the crux of the argument. I simply don't see a port as being property. Now, your machine is property--but the port? I just can't see it that way.
Clearly, we're arguing about different things. I'm looking at this from the DeCSS perspective of attempting to "outlaw a tool that *could* be used for immoral purposes." You're looking at it as trespassing. On that count, I would say that actually *launching* some kind of attack should definitely be illegal. But I fail to see a port as property. Perhaps we should agree to disagree? ;-)
Uh, no they don't. The concept of "Intellectual Property" is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The only thing granted is a monopoly power. It's quite clear that intangibles were never intended to be granted the status of property.
Furthermore the port exists only because a machine exists. That machine is mine, the post is on the machine and therefore the port is mine.
My argument is still that a port *doesn't exist*. It is an abstract entity.
From the wording of Article I, Section 8 of the Constituion, Copyright and Patent are *not* property rights but rather are monopoly rights.
I really don't think you can actually try and argue that a port does not exist. If it does not exist why are you scanning it? what are you scanning?
Nothing, really. I mean, it isn't a piece of silicon or a wire. It's just a software construct. You can't point to a place in physical space and say, "That's port 80."
Even in the one in a billion chance that a judge actually bought that argument you can not argue that the bandwidth you took up didn't exist, that my CPU didn't exist,
It can't take *that* much bandwidth or CPU time to check a port. It should be negligible.
my hard drive didn't exist or that my time didn't exists.
Checking a port wouldn't have any effect on your hard drive. Shouldn't take any of your time, either. Really, I still don't see it doing any damage.
This made me laugh. Portscanning and murder are the same thing?
Yep. But your ports aren't property. They aren't even corporeal.
Interesting. Please point me to the legal agreement I signed which states that - you ought to have no difficulty if your assertion is true.
It has nothing to do with a legal agreement. The Internet is a public internetwork by definition. It's like standing on a public highway.
My system is my system, for use by me and those whom I authorise to use it, and NO-ONE ELSE.
I suggest you disconnect your machine from the Internet. Or buy a good firewall, if you want to be more reasonable about things.
If you portscan my system, I wanna know WHY, and you better have a bloody good reason for it.
Red herring. We're talking about a law that forbids port scanning of *any system*, NOT YOUR SYSTEM. And, believe it or not, there are legitimate reasons to check the security of ports on other hosts. Like checking up on your ISPs security claims. Or checking your OWN systems. And if you don't think that would be illegal too, you don't know the government very well. ;-)
I don't know about google but there are commercial companies out there that do portscanning as part of their businessmodel.
Here is one:
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37301 -> xxx.xx.65.88:80 SYN ******S*
2 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37278 -> xxx.xx.65.65:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37285 -> xxx.xx.65.72:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37286 -> xxx.xx.65.73:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37287 -> xxx.xx.65.74:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37291 -> xxx.xx.65.78:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37293 -> xxx.xx.65.80:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37294 -> xxx.xx.65.81:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37298 -> xxx.xx.65.85:80 SYN ******S*
May 15 03:32:39 209.211.205.56:37302 -> xxx.xx.65.89:80 SYN ******S*
--
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
Does this mean that Google and company can now be found guilty when searching for open port 80 on networks ?
How about search engines that look for open 21(ftp) port ? , How about gopher ? CIFS (Common Internet filesystem) ? Hmmmm Interesting ..2 C3AF4F2snlbxq'|dc
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echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb15CB32EF3AF9C0E5D727
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
What do slashdot reading lawyers think? I know there are several.... I have seen them do posts before....
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
The difference is that they force you to use the alpha versions, whether you want to or not.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Analogies:
The third bullet is definitely questionable as far as this lawyer's analysis goes, but nmap is most certainly not illegal, witness bullet points one, two, and four. Five is just stupid.
I like to play children's songs in minor keys.
"We're all sons of bitches now." --J. Robert Oppenheimer
Well, the more you look at it, the more clear it is that the US government is a direct result of pure anarchy...
--
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
- 1st paragraph, 2nd sentence:Laws made to protect computer security? How do you protect security? Or does he mean computer security is applied unpredictably? What?
- 2nd para., 2nd sent.Either the word 'in' or the phrase 'partially on' need to be deleted.
- 2nd para, 3rd sent. With property rights, computer owners will not be willing to connect to the Internet if their computers can be abused without legal remedy. So what's his point?
/me gives up in disgust and then notices byline, at the very beginning:
Ethan Preston expects to receive his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2001.
Right... and I expect to be made emperor in 2001. I'll never hire a Georgetown alumnus if Ethan makes the grade.
I'll begin with this...
The people that insist that port scanning should be legal miss the fact that it should be legal ONLY for the sysadmins of that particular network, not for every idiot that thinks he/she should have the 'freedom' to scan a network that doesn't belong to him/her.
A stated law that makes it clear that port scanning is illegal for those outside of that networks system administrators gives people the tool to go after those who scan networks for holes that they can exploit. For instance, on my dialup connection I regularly get scanned for SubSeven and NetBus. These people are looking specifically for those ports, and the only reason they are scanning those ports is to find a machine that has been compromised that they can get into. Those that advocate being able to run port scans on networks that they don't admin could also use the same argument that it's ok to attempt a robbery as long as the attempt isn't successfull.
But, I do expect the whole concept here to fall on deaf ears (or blind eye's as it were), since it seems that Slashdot has become a haven for the script kiddie crowd.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Also, another poster said that any computer attached to a public network is fair game. Ok, here's a stupid analogy: "If you park your car on a public street, you should expect it to be stolen". Do you keep your car always locked up in a garage? How about "if you drive your car down a public street, you should expect to get carjacked. If you don't want to get carjacked, don't drive it on a public street! Build your own private street to drive on!".
You're right, it is a stupid analogy.
If I put a server on the 'net, I don't expect it to be broken into. Nor do I expect my car in a public parking lot to be. However, I do expect that if I park my car in a public parking lot, someone may *look* at it. Oh no! You looked at my car! You *must* be trying to break in. What other reason could you possibly have for looking at my car?
Heck, you could even write down my license plate number. Suspicious? Yes. Illegal? Certainly not.
-Wintermute
It's kinda like showing a proof of Godel's Incompleteness Theory to someone not versed in math. Each step of the process is simple and straightforward, but as a whole it's tough for an untrained mind to grasp and follow along.
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Of course, I think I'm preaching to the choir...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
Wow, then just about every networked Windos box in the entire world is guilty. Or else why does the firewall get hit on port 137 all the time, unsolicited?
And an "http GET request" is not a port scan.
Go Captain Contradiction! Do you realize you have to connect to a tcp port in order to make that request? Or do you expect Yahoo, Hotmail, Slashdot, etc all to call you up and say "sure, you can connect to our servers"?
The fact is, by connecting your machine to the Internet you're pretty much giving permission for random people to connect. A port scan is nothing more than a connection attempt, to see whether or not the attempt will be accepted or rejected. The house analogy is bad, because there you're not giving permission for random people to come see what you're offering whereas by connecting to the Internet you are (the Internet currently has no method of connecting to be a client only, everyone is potentially a server).
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
If you're going to try to correct me, please bother to know what you're talking about. If you don't, it just adds to the stigma of stupidity all ACs have.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
That's ok, most people aren't talking about anything besides "Portscanning is like using a bomb to blow up my house! It's illegal!", followed by "You wanker, if you'd think for a minute you'd realize how stupid that analogy sounds" and a few rebuttals along the lines of "No, it's more like looking at your house to see if it exists."
I'd estimate the S/N ratio at about 1/4000, that high because there are only about 400 posts at the moment. At least the ACs are having a field day, it's almost worth turning the threshold to 0 to see the more lucid ones insult the less lucid posters.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
A netboot machine? Windos with nthe "network neighborhood"? Most connections require a userspace program to request a connection. Contrary to Micros~1 propaganda, a web browser isn't really a standard operating system component.
Or were you referring to nmap not using the OS routines to attempt the connect? If so, then you're just wrong since it does use the OS routines.
Secondly, blah blah blah
It's usually considered bad form to change definitions in the middle of a debate.
So you're telling me you've never done an HTTP GET just to determine if the webserver is running? Oh no, port scan! Anyway, next time I portscan you i'll just be sure to send a GET request and you'll consider it not-a-port-scan.
This is similar in attitude to the "admins that dont patch their systems deserve to get cr/hacked", and almost as ridiculous
Go Straw Man! I'll just ignore this comment.
or implicitely (eg. setting up a website)
"I was just checking to see if that's what you had done!". Or is that a portscan, because i didn't magically know the instant you did so?
The sad fact is that many people don't seem to really understand the Internet. That's why we have parents expecting that the internet should fit their morality even though anyone can publish, governments thinking they can legislate it, and people like you thinking "no! don't even look at me!" is a basic right.
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perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
If you go up and down the street knocking on people's doors in order to find out who is not at home, then you are "casing". And that is a crime.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Absolutely not! Girl Scouts knocking on doors are specifically looking for people at home. Ditto for Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons and trick-or-treaters. Casing is when you knock on doors (or perform other activities) to find out who is NOT at home. Big difference. Huge difference.
Go around your neighborhood. Knock on all the doors. When someone answers, politely say "Oh! I'm sorry, I didn't expect you to be home. I'll come back later." Within minutes someone's going to call the cops on you.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
kinda like if you're worried about getting shot and killed you shouldn't go outside.
Port scanning IS passive.
...
In the bank analogy, how do you know if they have a door or a window? Photons from the sun bounce off of it and hit your eye in a recognizable pattern.
How would you do this on a cloudy night? A flashlight perhaps?
There's no way (asside from sending out continual broadcast messages from everyone) for a server to broadcast that it is serving something. You simply have to ask. Portscanning is how you do that. You ask if they are serving files. How about web pages? How about
Now, you could make up some convoluted scenario where the bank had photo-cells in the windows to detect if it was night, and your flashlight, unlawfully shined into their windows, blah blah blah...
This would be like if you were scanning for someone sharing files, you check FTP, HTTP, Windows networking, etc... Now maybe someone has a misconfigured program that instead of saying 'No', crashes when asked.
But that's not your fault, you were just asking a question.
If you exploited this, by asking over and over, it'd be akin to harassment. An otherwise legal action would be forbidden by context.
Similarly, portscanning should be legal. It's the way the network works. But malicious use of portscanning, or portscanning connected to a crime, wouldn't be legal.
"If nmap is illegal, than only criminals will have nmap"
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Perhaps a friendly call to them to get permission first?
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
No, I haven't, but you probably haven't either. Don't know until you try and all that. Personally, if someone called me (preferably someone who had already requested info on hosting services from me) and made such a request, I'd probably allow it.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
>>Connecting to a public network for private purposes is inherently retarded and should never be done.
Like connecting a private driveway to a public road???
Scene 1. Garage door open. Stuff inside. Nobody in sight.
Scene 2. Same but with "Garage Sale" signs stuck in the front lawn.
In scene 1, you don't expect strangers to come wandering into your garage. In scene 2, you do.
Well, actually, I'm not sure that's the case. The author lists two references for that one particular sentence:
l (modified Jan. 20, 2000).
TIMOTHY PARKER, TEACH YOURSELF TCP/IP IN 14 DAYS Page 1-50 (2nd ed. 1996); Jason Yanowitz, Under the hood of the Internet
An overview of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite at http://info.acm.org/crossroads/xrds1-1/tcpjpy.htm
Though I would rather he read the Stevens book as opposed to some "teach yourself something in 14 days" the fact remains that he is right. Though separating the process of communications into layers is an academic exercise and not a technical one. The TCP/IP model and the DOD model both have 4 layers. The OSI model has 7 layers, much like that burrito from taco bell.
Check out this link for differences between the three.
Killing people might actually have a useful purpose once in a while. But I still like the idea of keeping it illegal. The fact that the act can be committed from overseas doesn't mean that it shouldn't be a crime. Nor does criminalization mean that you shouldn't defend against port scanners. It is illegal to steal a car; every car sold still has locks and a keyed ignition. You can't count on the law to find and prosecute the one who attacks you; that's not a complaint about the law, just the fact that they are only human. So you defend yourself with firewalls, burglar alarms, and pepper spray, cooperate with the law when you are attacked, and let the law simply reduce the number of jerks willing to attack you.
--The basis of all love is respect
Let's say I'm connecting my computer to the internet for private purposes.
Connecting to a public network for private purposes is inherently retarded and should never be done. Because of this, the rest of your comment is irrelevant.
-- iCEBaLM
The point was connecting to a public network for *purely* private purposes is inherently retarded, as in: connecting top secret millitary computers to the internet, connecting your corporate intranet with all of your trade secrets to the internet, connecting your electric power grid controllers to the internet.
Usernames and Passwords are used when a specific subset of the *public* need to connect to publicly accessable computers. Connecting to a public network and expecting *not* to get portscanned or *not* to get connected to is just stupid.
-- iCEBaLM
Like connecting a private driveway to a public road and never expecting anyone to look at it or the occasional stranger using it to turn around.
-- iCEBaLM
Crime, eh?
Okay, suppose someone passes such a law. How the hell is the law going to be enforced?
On the defensive side, you really have no idea whether the host you're being scanned from is really where the packets are coming from, so you could end up throwing your lawyers at host A whilst on host B the "real" scanner is laughing at your expense and looking for someone else to spoof.
On the offensive side, you could outlaw tools like nmap, to prevent people from scanning in the first place. If the lesson from DeCSS means anything, making nmap illegal will not hinder anyone's access to it, except people who have a legitimate need to use such tools.
You could license use of scanning tools, e.g. to "Certified Systems Administrators," but that won't slow down the black hats any (see above), and just make the life of a sysadmin more difficult.
Laws against portscanning would be unenforcable; time better spent securing systems so they don't get cracked in the first place, and leveraging existing laws against the people who *do* break into systems.
Port scanning is like looking at a house from across the street. The equivalent of "crawling around someone's house rattling doorknobs, windows, mailboxes, air ducts, rooftop hatches, basement doors, garage doors, electric panel doors, gas valves, water valves, sewer vent lines, outdoor outlets, chimney openings, stove vents" is sending known exploit code to the port in order to see if you can get unauthorized access. It's not even like looking in the windows. A port scan tells you nothing more about a computer than seeing that a window on the second floor has been left open.
The first could be used in the sense of "casing the joint," but it could also be a case of looking at the architecture of the houses on the block without the owners' permission. It may make some people uncomfortable, but it's hardly illegal. A port scan is the closest thing to a look-but-don't -touch on the Net today.
If port scanning is found to be illegal, would a bare ping to see if a site is up and running be made illegal in the future as well? Beware the slippery-slope. We need to make sure that there is a difference in law between commiting a crime and having the potential to commit a crime.
If a script kiddie starts trying known exploits against your box, THAT should be seen as a crime. They are totally trying the vents to see if it's loose so that they can gain access. This is a clear, distinct, and unambiguous step beyond a port scan.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Too often these days we see those who are empowered in our society, either by money, political or social position, seeking further extensions of that power. The law, it seems, wasn't enough.
The RIAA and MPAA were tremendously well-protected under the Copyright Act, without more. But that was not enough. Dissatisfied with the existing provisions of the Act, carefully negotiated by careful balancing of public policies, they went for the raw power-grab, and obtained rights in gross through the MPAA, making it a crime and actionable to circumvent copyright protection technology, even when the technology circumvention does not give rise to an infringement.
Likewise with trademarks, the AntiCybersquatting Act and trademark dilution.
Likewise here, with the proposed "don't peek" provisions. Again, the Congress carefully drafted (well, its a mess, but its what they gave us) the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Electronic Communications Protection Act, with all its powers and limitations, to prevent certain kinds, but not all kinds, of hackery. Congress expressly limited de minimus impositions costing less than $5,000 per year, such as pings, from the CFAA, precisely to protect overreaching machine-owners and, if you will, "to permit the spice to flow" as internet technologies develop.
But the powers that be are always seeking yet another way. We no longer need the CFAA, with all of its policy-balancing limitations and exceptions. Instead, let's just make it illegal to ping, if I'm powerful enough to sue your patents off, and watch you squirm under the power of my legal sledgehammer.
This is, simply put, the wrong thing to do. If we are going to empower people to protect legitimate interests, we must carefully carve out the abuse of that power to protect other interests; and make it cost the nasty plaintiffs when they lose.
I do not condone computer crime, and portscanning is a blight upon mine eyes. But we shouldn't make it criminal or actionable when it doesn't rise to the level of meaningful denial of service, and we should wait until a computer crime is actually committed before we go after someone for a computer crime.
Otherwise, we simply empower the powerful to prey upon the weak. That will always happen, of course as a force of nature -- but we needn't write it into the law.
It is time to STOP changing the law to circumvent public policy, just to appease the few powerful enough to lobby the Congress. Yes, this sounds good, and the argument of the article, while not persuasive, cannot be ignored without reasoned comment. But it is bad for the net, and it is bad for America. We don't need to arrest woeful pingers, just because it would facilitate catching a few real bad guys who are otherwise slipping through the cracks.
That's too much and not enough good law.
Verra dangerous, imho, because it's horrdily broad. Building a massive microwave generator and pointing it at your neighbor's house would be legal.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
perhaps it is like knocking on doors, but in that case solicitors need to be kept in check as well. I hate it when people call me in the middle of dinner to tell me what great long distance rates I could be getting. I politely ask them back if a member of my ( MLM | religious cult | gang ) can contact them, I'm sure they are interested. Anyway I don't like port scanners hitting me either...kind of the same concept, but it's hard to put a NO SOLICITING sign up on an ip address
this sig is deprecated
"Port scanning has nothing to do with breaking in."
You have got to be kidding me. Every hack starts with a portscan. When you say "looking" what you really mean is "casing the joint". You are walking around my house and trying to figure out how best to break in. What possible legitemate reason do YOU have for portscanning? If you want to know if I have FTP services for you ask me, better yet presume that it's not there becuase I did not tell you about it. If I wanted you to access my computer via FTP I would have let you know.
Also It's one thing wonder about wheather or not I have an FTP server and it's another to scan every single port on my machine. What is your justification for that?
I tell people to use portsentry. That way they can immediately blackhole anybody who does a portscan. Anybody who does a portscan is doing it because they want to hack your system. There is no other reason to do one.
War is necrophilia.
All cracks start with a portscan. Maybe in the one to two percent of the cases a portscan is done for benign reasons but really even you have to admit that most of the people portscanning you want to see if they can break in. Use portsentry and black hole people who portscan you. You'll see how many of them complain that they can't finish their portscan.
War is necrophilia.
Why are you seeing if a port is open? Better yet why do you want to know about the status of every single port on my machine? DO I know you? Did I say I was going to provide some service for you on my computer? Did I tell you about some service and forget to tell you the port?
Be honest. People running portscans are doing it because they want to hack your machine.
War is necrophilia.
If he wanted you to play his game he would have told you about the port.
War is necrophilia.
"Without portscanning, how do you find out what services a host provides to the public?"
Here is a novel idea.
Presume that there is no public services unless you have been told about them by the people who own the server. They are not obligated to provide you with anything. If a service is not advertised or nobody told you about it why are you looking for it?
War is necrophilia.
"Trying doors and windows: Using packaged exploits (parallels: It's easy; if it succeeds you are now able to walk around and do what you want; and any responsible person would have taken the simple measures to prevent its effectiveness)"
Nevertheless this could get you arrested. If you actually walk in then it's breaking and entering. Trying the door is actually trespassing because at that moment you are in my property. It could be argued that the minute you leave the sidewalk you are tresspassing in my property. The analog of that might be that the minute you probe a port without an advertised service you are a criminal.
War is necrophilia.
Unfortunately this is a slippery slope argument. What If I lock my door but the lock can be jimmied easaliy? What if somebody on the internet developes a skeleton key which now opens every lock with that brand? Now what? I locked my door like a responsible citizen but some script kiddie got a hold of a skeleton key and ransacked my house. Is it still my fault?
The problem is that even though you may be relatively responsible person there are bound to be security hacks that you don't know about. The burden should not be on me. IT should be on the person doing the breaking and entering. You can't just say but you should have changed your lock, it was known for three days that this skeleton key was in circulation.
War is necrophilia.
Anybody can DOS you anytime they want. There is nothing you can do about it.
Portsentry listens on ports you tell it to and when it detects a scan it can immediately run an ipchains rule to blakhole your ip address.
War is necrophilia.
99 percent of all port scans being done are a prelude to an attack on your system. If somebody is portscanning your system you can be 99% sure they are looking to break into your system.
"And what about the suggestion that portscans should be used to verify the security claims of ISPs before subscribing."
Simple. Call up the ISP and ask for permission to do a portscan. If they don't let you move, on to another one.
War is necrophilia.
Just because people are ripping of their employees that does not mean the portscanners should get a free ride. People do have the capability to worry about more then one security problem at a time. Some breaches are due to internal employees and some breaches are due to external hackers.
Just as internal employees are punished severely if caught so should the portscanners and the hackers.
Oh BTW are you seriously suggesting that crackers don't start with a nmap first thing? They just let loose with an attack on a random port without first checking to see if that port is available?
War is necrophilia.
Because logs are for after the fact. Logs don't prevent you from being hacked. Sure you can take precautions and you should but tripwire will tell you after the fact that you have been hacked. There is always cause to be afraid.
Hackers will attack your system via exploits that may not be known to you or even to the general public. There is always some delay between a hack being discovered and being published and fixed. So that "necessary" port may be sitting duck for a buffer exploit and you don't even know it yet. Also any hacker anywhere in the world can DOS you with off the shelf kits and there is nothing you can do about it.
I will restate. Anybody who is doing a portscan of your system is most probably looking to crack it. Maybe one or two percent of portscans are accidents or legitamate but the vast majority of them are people who are looking to take over your machine and commit crimes. If you detect a portscan you can be 99% sure the person who just portscanned you was looking to see they could break in. They have criminal intent.
War is necrophilia.
Internet started with a small set of highly trusted people and hosts. All of the core internet protocols have this trust presumption built into them. It's not the same world now. Sorry.
The days of leaving your server open to mail relay, rpc etc are long gone and will never come back thanks to the legion of script kiddies who have nothing to do but crack other machines and launch DDOS attacks against anybody they want to.
So no you may NOT presume that I am giving you something. You may NOT presume that any service I have on my machine is for you. Do not try to connect to my machine unless you know there is a service there AND have been told so via advertising, links, email, phone or otherwise that you are welcome it.
It's my machine and you keep your hands off it.
You have no reason to port scan me. NONE. If you are port scanning me it can only mean you mean to crack it.
War is necrophilia.
What a bunch of crap.
First of all a tool that is used 99% of the time in criminal activity and 1% of the time in non criminal activity will be either illegal or highly regulated. All kinds of chemicals and drugs fall under this classification. You can't go into a drug store and buy heroin but a doctor can prescribe it for you. They are not illegal to have but require licensing, registration etc. In the real world it's not all or nothing.
There is no reason why something like that can not be set up to prevent hackers from portscanning your machine.
War is necrophilia.
I hope and pray that the day will come where the TCP/IP protocol will be in such a condition that I will be instantly able to track down any portscanner. When Packets can't be spoofed, when return adressed can't be forged, and when people will be held personally responsible for their acts of vandalism. When such a day comes I will be the first in line to press charges against anybody who portscans my system and make them pay for taking up my bandwidth and my processing power even it's only ten cents. I will also fight to make these actions criminal, I will lobby my congresspeople and I will tell anybody who listens. Until people end up jail for cracking systems cracking will go on. Until we fix the protocols which allow people to unleash distruction anonymously we will all be victims of smart aleck 13 year old script kiddies with nothing to do but jerk off to pr0n and destroy other peoples property because they can't get laid and have to realese their sexual frustration by being destructive.
War is necrophilia.
I would outlaw port scanning without permission. That's all. If you want to portscan me just ask I might let you otherwise it's tresspassing. Of course something like this would be hard to enforce given the state of TCP/IP as it is today but one day your ability to spoof will be gone and I will dance in the streets. But then again tresspassing is hard to enforce too if you have a 300 acre ranch. Somehow it's still illegal though.
War is necrophilia.
I would agree to disagree except that you keep insisting that a port on my machine, set up by me, for my purposes, using bandwidth I paid for by me is somehow not my property.
War is necrophilia.
It will one day because it's logical and consistent with our current concepts of property. Many people have ranches spanning many acres which are not fenced but it's still illegal for you to step on that land, bike through it, hunt on it etc. You may claim that it causes no harm to walk through their property or that because they have not fenced it you are free to walk about on it but it's still trespassing.
Port scaning is tresspassing pure and simple. It matters not what your intention is or weather I have IPchains rules to stop you. BTW even if I do have firewall rules you are still eating up my bandwidth and my CPU cyles and my hard drive space by port scanning me.
In america property rights are very vigorously defended. Using other peoples property without permission is illegal in most cases and will one day be illegal in this case too. It's just a matter of time for technology to catch up so it can be enforced. Hopefully IPv6 will take us a huge step in that direction and I can't wait.
War is necrophilia.
False on both accounts.
Even intangible things like ideas, concepts, songs, plans, etc are considered property and have legal status of ownership. Furthermore the port exists only because a machine exists. That machine is mine, the post is on the machine and therefore the port is mine.
Even if you don't do "damage" I can argue that your portscan cost me money. It cost me money because you used my bandwidth, it cost me money becuase you used my CPU cycles, it cost me money because you used my hard drive space and it cost me money because I had to analyze that log to try and see it you were up to no good. It cost me tangible money and tangible time. Even if each portscan cost me five or ten dollars it adds up ove the lifespan of the machine. I suppose I could ignore my logs but that too would cost me even more money in the long run.
War is necrophilia.
No matter what you think of intellectual property the fact remains that it's the law of the land. There are a whole host of "intangible" things like copyright etc that are coded into the law as property.
I really don't think you can actually try and argue that a port does not exist. If it does not exist why are you scanning it? what are you scanning? Even in the one in a billion chance that a judge actually bought that argument you can not argue that the bandwidth you took up didn't exist, that my CPU didn't exist, my hard drive didn't exist or that my time didn't exists. In other words the damage you caused was real no matter how ethereal or "unreal" the port was.
War is necrophilia.
logs can be faked.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
It's more like twisting the door knob to check if it's locked, but not actually opening the door.
removing the need for a professional army
*ank* wrong. Unlike most people today the founding fathers were aware that governments eventually go to shit and that the only way to keep a government honest is by threatening to overthrow it if it doesn't meet your needs.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Portscans are illegal ... ok.
Let's call a machine "ftp.publicftp.com", "www.supermegasexy.com", "napsterhq.napsterhq.com", "irc.ircnetwork.com" etc. Post various usenet news with these URLs, buy banners, etc.
But don't run any service on these machines. Just log connection attemps, and have a lawyer sit besides you.
Then, sue everyone in courts, and get rich.
{{.sig}}
Without portscanning, how do you find out what services a host provides to the public? A website is not the answer, because there's no obligation for a host to set up an HTTP server just because they want to offer IRC. See purple.com for an example of this.
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There's no reason why I should have to phone 30 WSPs prior to scanning a public interface.
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Maybe what's needed is a `System Policy Information Protocol' with a standard way of specifying what is and is not allowed on a specific host.
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You would, and so would I, but try calling a Windows-centric tech support line. ("Let me talk to my supervisor... HOLD ... HOLD ... HOLD ... I'm sorry, we don't allow spamming from our networks. Oh. You want to do what, again? ... HOLD ...")
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THANK YOU! I was hoping someone would say that.
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The idea behind proposing that protocol was to show how silly it would be to suggest another method of finding out what is allowed when there is already such a method available (namely ICMP destination port unreachable).
What's scary is someone will eventually propose such a system, and be serious about it, and lawmakers will gobble it up.
I think the problem here is a bunch of networking newbies who think suspicious activity equals illegal activity. They're running BlackIce (or some other intrusion detection software), and as soon as they get an alert, they scream "Oh my God! Someone's trying to hack my computer!" They get scared and think that anything picked up by an IDS must be illegal.
Realistically, the only things that should be unarguably illegal are DoS attacks, since there's no technical measure to prevent being attacked by them. All other security breaches are either the programmer's fault, the sysadmin's fault, or the trusted user's fault.
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This is a faulty analogy that is almost a troll. Port scanning doesn't damage anything, but smashing a window does.
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Yes, but so does pinging or accessing an HTTP server. That doesn't make them inherently illegal.
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Port scanning isn't trying to break into a bank. It's pulling on the doors when the bank is closed to see if they're unlocked. There's nothing illegal about that.
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Maybe, but that gives rise to the false notion that port scanning is passive. That analogy is more like packet sniffing.
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It helps to remove some of the most blatently clueless companies from my list.
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Put that way, it would never hold up in court.
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Should you be deprived of the right to examine the quality of a service before buying it, especially when it wouldn't fall under "theft of services"? I think not.
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It's one thing to knock on the door, its quite another to wander around the house looking for a second story window you could climb into.
ie, it would be fine to "scan" a few common ports, but rather suspicious to scan a few thousand.
Fuck you, the nmap uses the same function (connect(2)) that the fucking web browser uses to connect to a server on a given port. Don't speak about thing you have no knowledge of!
I agree with you on most points. A few things...
;) Additionally, it teaches the mentality of combat, which is a big obstacle for people unfamiliar with combative situations.
There is no greater good. What is good for you is not good for everybody else. Shooting an assailant is good for you, but not for him or his family. Not that I wouldn't blow the jerk's head off, but the myth of the greater good should be addressed anyway.
Of course, there are many times when it is neccessary to defend yourself with violence, and I'm all in favor of that.
But as far as guns go, you're statistically much more likely to shoot yourself, family, or a friend, than an attacker. Drawing a weapon on an attacker makes it more likely that they'll respond with deadly force. Most of the people who attack you just want your wallet, they don't want to kill you. The ones that want to kill you, will probably do it whether or not you have a gun. They have the advantage of surprise, having the weapon out and ready to fire, and are probably hard enough to not hesitate to pull the trigger. Most (not all, of course) non-psychotics will be too frightened in that situation to respond quickly enough without fumbling to get out of it alive.
I'm sure many people have saved themselves against attackers using their guns. I'm willing to bet that a whole lot more people have been killed as a result of provoking an attacker or in an accident at home.
I'm not saying that guns should be outlawed - that's foolish, and wouldn't work in any case. I'm just saying that if you're looking to improve your personal safety, there are better choices. Martial arts, for instance. It's much harder for your kid to accidentally pick up your fist and beat himself to death with it.
Far from a perfect solution, but hey, we don't live in a perfect world.
Andrew
Andrew
Observation from a public area or from a storefront or plaza does not violate privacy or privacy law. Entering the windows or using an unlocked door to wander through the store after hours would be considered trespass. However, setting off an alarm, for example a motion detector by merely walking by an open window to get a closer look would not be considered a crime. While perusing a store or restaurant during working hours one might notice that a back door, window, or loading dock was left open, revealing the inventory or billing records. A criminal passerby could then enter the area without difficulty, endangering the storeowner. Mentioning such exposure to the owner of a local shop or restaurant would not merit calling the police at once. In fact, a local businessperson, if unaware of the problem, might thank you. Some merchants might look at you suspiciously, but guessing intent in such case would not be cause for prosecution. The manager or owner would instead be advised, if suspicious, to make sure that the door or window was securely locked and double-checked at close of business. Mentioning that something is insecure is not a violation. For example, noting that the window(s) were left open is not a crime. Unlike advising the merchant during business hours, such a revelation late at night would cause much more alarm and suspicion, but we would still find it difficult to call this action a crime. An inconspicuous note left where the owner would see it when the store was being made ready for the next day's business might be considered imprudent. A passing criminal might note that as well, and use the information to trespass or even rob the establishment. Paying a security firm to examine the premises, provide advice and install an alarm system is of course quite common. Employing a locksmith for upgrades of the locks is as well. In some neighborhoods the installation of bars on the windows is a common sight. In a corporate setting, employing after hours security guards is expected. For a large enterprise, 24-hour security personnel are commonly employed. Even in this setting, a visitor wandering the building and examining the security would not be committing a crime. Such curiosity might cause the security guard to detain and question the person. If these actions were discovered via closed-circuit cameras, the guard might choose to make note, and watch carefully in future to determine if the visitor engaged in such activity at a later date, or repeatedly. If, beyond a reasonable doubt, the person was clearly obtaining information used in criminal trespass, the company might have a restraining order issued. Similarly, if the suspect entered an area marked "authorized personnel only", one infraction could be a mistake. A repeated entry into restricted areas is trespass, and legal action would be justifiable. Application of the Metaphor Direct application of the metaphorical examples presented should demonstrate that similar actions in an Internet setting may or may not be criminal. Examination of public-facing TCP ports is analogous to an examination of the doors or drive-thru window of a business. Placing unwanted files on a server with loosely defined FTP security (in a non-public directory) is akin to placing boxes of magazines in the storage area of an ice cream shop. "Borrowing" a box of books from the loading dock area of a local reseller is clearly theft. Replacing a storefront sign with a personal one would be considered vandalism. But what of hanging an easily removable banner across the storefront? This might be vandalism as well. If the sign noted in large letters that you found the doors unlocked, perhaps this is a case of reckless endangerment. Case law exists involving decisions on violation of the edges or walls of a private structure. Application of difficult to remove graffiti is criminal. Depositing trash in a private-property parking lot, although publicly accessible, is also a crime. The analogies to actions in cyberspace should be clear. Some examples provide less obvious conclusions. Is reading another customer's credit card number while in the checkout line a criminal act? Is the simple possession of that information a crime? If a customer drops a receipt with their card number on it, and another picks up that receipt, are they legally obligated to destroy it? When hackers access an e-commerce system and copy credit transaction data they are guilty of trespass. They are in possession of information considered private, although this information is used publicly in commercial transactions. They did not obtain that information by accident. Opinions and case decisions may vary regarding the legality of such possession. Cases exist where volumes of credit card information were stolen and distributed. The intent to engage in criminal activity becomes obvious. When an individual's credit information is used without her permission, a crime has been committed. Home Computing Application of the metaphor presented to the home user is worthwhile. Here there is no storefront or area of business. Trespass is still prosecutable, even when a sign is not present explicitly stating "no trespassing". However, if a neighbor's door or window is surprisingly wide open and can be seen from the street, one would not be blamed for a phone call or a hello made from the edge of the yard. If the situation seemed extremely out of character or different, a phone call to the local police is even normal. Burglar alarms, security systems, and neighborhood watches are akin to intrusion detection systems. If, through such observation a burglary in progress might be discovered. In this case, a call to police might prevent a crime. Remote examination of a residential property with binoculars might be considered inappropriate, but how is such activity itself a crime? If a property owner or resident wishes to prevent such actions, fences, window shades and curtains are readily available. Noting other vulnerabilities is also not criminal, if looking carefully, one might see a large vent or pet door that could be used to gain entry. At the edge of the property there could be a hole in the fence. If a homeowner has a yard sale or an open house, closer examination of the property is unavoidable. Conclusion Based on the application of the metaphor above, port scans, ICMP examination of networks, and similar activities cannot be considered illegal. The TCP connect process does not transfer any application layer data. Sending or receiving data occurs after the connection is complete. Displays of information such as server name, operating system or other information about the host are the first data transferred in a telnet connection. E-mail applications also often provide such identifying information during SMTP connections. Obtaining such information is little different from looking in a store window to see what type of construction is present. Other scan types do not even complete the TCP connect process, perhaps these are akin to a passing glance while walking or driving by. Discovering that a door is unlocked or ajar is not a crime. For an information security professional, such activity might even be a hobby, with intent to help neighborhood businesses rather than harm them. Performing such an examination out of curiosity provides no proof of criminal intent. Proof of intent is difficult without conclusive evidence. Since intent cannot be arbitrarily determined, simply engaging in port scanning activity is not a crime. The situation is altered in the home user's environment. As discussed above, testing the locks and windows of a neighbor's home without their knowledge is a different situation. Once in the yard you are already on their property. Notifying the owner of obviously insecure circumstances (without trespassing) is not considered a crime, however. In some cases, this action is rewardable.
Doing a port scan of port 80 is minimal intrusion compared to connecting to it and performing a get request. Using the fence analogy, it is like forbidding someone to jump the fence but at the same time allowing them to jump the fence if they wish to use an automobile you generously keep there for public use.
First, I gather the lawyer involved has never traveled west of the Missisippi River, if he is under the impression that settlement has eliminated open range practices; there is still a considerable area where this applies and is still useful.
Equally he might consider hunting/fishing related common law in much of the USA, which often does not require a sportsman to assume that the mere presence of a fence is meant to prohibit him crossing same; or that in the UK which allows use of private property for casual hikers, indeed prohibits farmers from generally denying access.
Generally I gathered from reading the article that the writer believes invoking the "fence" metaphor would be a valuable way for courts to treat the internet. IMHO this is unsupportable garbage.
Imagine the chaos resulting from the ability of a person to physically fence off his property from that generally open, with a "fence" which was invisible and could cause the invocation of legal sanctions by the mere attempt to detect it - much less cross it - while others allowed and even needed people crossing those fences into their space to maintain their livelihoods. And to arbitrarily invoke those sanctions against specific access by persons left-handed, with long hair (or using nmap, et cetra), with no way for a person to know they were of a forbidden class, and the landowner having no duty to inform them.
This would be a closer analogy to the real dispute over port scanning with nmap and the like, and would cause legal risk for anyone attempting to use any area of the "open range" or those areas which though fenced are not forbidden, or known-fenced areas where their use probably would be accepted, but where it is uncertain.
The fence analogy sucks because in the real world there are only some places and situations where a fence means you are forbidden access, and fences are almost always visible. What exists on on the Internet is more like carefully hidden nets of underground sensors designed to detect intruders but invisible to the naked eye.
Even where fences exist, therefore, there is often a requirement that trespassing only occurs if the owner of a property has posted "no trespassing" signs, or those forbidding certain uses (hunting, for instance) conspicuously enough that a person is indeed informed of what the rules are (and other places with different rules, but the internet is effectively too global to allow such divisions).
Therefore, what I propose is this: an access-allowed checking protocol. A method by which an internet-connected node can, if it wishes, indicate that certain uses are forbidden.
Perhaps a TCP port which can be accessed with no fear of liability which could return data indicating "Ports A, B, and D are meant for public use, but port C is private, don't twiddle with it". Maybe add further info about just what use is allowed beyond that, such as allowing HTTP access for browser use but not by data-mining spiders.
This would place a burden on both the public whose programs would have to check the access first, and the owner of the node who would have to put up the "no trespassing" signs. It would not cure the problem, but would at least allow both sides recourse to something which would allow them to know they are acting legally or which would enforce their desired restrictions
Perhaps there are uses which the assumption would still be "allowed" or "forbidden" despite no check for the "sign" being required or no posting of it needed, but in general with no way to check for or advertise the "fence" one side or the other is going to be screwed.
Guns are inanimate objects. They are neither good nor evil, but can be used for good and evil purposes. See World War II for examples of both.
Both guns and port scanning tools have entirely legitimate and beneficial uses, and neither should be banned.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
If 'unauthorised access' is illegal, then if i run a web server, with an index page that clearly states that i do not wish anyone to request any of the documents from it, and someone requests and transfers a document from it, are they breaking the law?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
I'd compare port sacnning to wandering across that lawn and checking to see whether the doors and windows are locked. You might just be worried about my security and safety but see how far you get telling it to the police.
The way I look at it, if it's ok for the goverment to do it, it should be ok for the people to do it also. Is not the government supposed to serve the people in a democracy? Is a slave greater than his master?
How faithful can one be to the private property metaphor without getting into absurd comparisons? If port scanning is illegal, so should looking at someone's house, roof, lawn, doors, windows, etc...
I agree that this is a stupid analogy. How can one jiggle a doorknob if you do not know a door is there in the first place? A better analogy would be walking down the street and looking at the house and noting where it has doors, windows, etc. Jiggling the doorknob is hitting it with Nessus or wuftpd-god.c or whatnot. If you are connected to the internet and you do not want your ports scanned, then close the ones you don't need and/or firewall them off from public access. More responsibilty needs to be burdened on the admins to secure their machines. When some moron takes a RedHat or NT disk and does a default install without tightening the system then sticks it on a fat pipe they endanger everyone on the net. These are the drunk drivers of the net. The ideal situation is that it should not matter if someone does a port scan if you've secured your boxes correctly.
Once you move your computer onto a public network you've changed the rules it operates under. Since the door analogy is so popular, I'd say that doing a port scan is akin to walking through a shopping district and pushing on each of the doors. In this way you can determine which shops are open for business and which are closed. The fact that you might later come back and rob some of these shops is an entirely separate matter.
________________________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Gawd some people scare me. The reason Americans hold the consitutional right to hold guns is because the founding forefathers thought if the public was armed, it could form a standing militia - ensuring government responsibilty and removing the need for a professional army. The right doesn't have anything to do with defending your self from the local punks, however.
Anyway, the whole 'guns are tools' argument is so stupid it's almost funny. By that logic, it follows that, since nuclear weapons are tools every house in the world should be supplied with one. Guns can be used for hunting, and nuclear weapons can be used for medical research and DYI open cut mining, so they both have alternative purposes. Bring it on, I say.
Hell, if the right to bear arms is a fundamental right, why aren't the Americans out giving weapons to everyone? Cuba needs some. I hear they have a shortage in the middle east. The taliban seem to be running low. The Americans invade the national sovereignty of autonomous states in the name of the greater good, so why is the dispensing of weaponry any different from medical aid if they're both fundamental rights.
Anyway, that was silly. I should reply to people who are either a) right wing zealots b) trolls c) thick d) unfunny.
Smilies,
Barrabas
before we *ank*, let us review history. True, the founding fathers acknowledged the role of the armed public militia in keeping government honest (as I acknowledged), but the role of the militia in supplanting the standing army is well documented: "It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expense with which they afford ambitious and unprincipled rulers to subvert the government, or trammel upon the rights of the people." Justice Story, cited in Joseph Story. 'Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States'. 3 vols. Boston, Mass.: Hilliard, Gray, 1833, 2: 607 The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; a well armed, and well regulated militia being the best security of a free country - From the Madison Resolution for Amending the Constitution, June 8, 1789. I can't be bothered looking up any more references, but that'll do... Barrabas
Exactly. There is no legitimate reason to portscan a range of dialup, cable, or DSL IP addresses.
I can tell you that your assertion is completely untrue. In many cases, ISPs use something called dynamic IP addreses. These addresses can change (usually do) every time your computer connects to your ISP. Since we all know that computers often get disconnected from dialup connections, how do I find my computer when I'm at work if I need to use it? I can't because you just made it illegal. Back in the real world where people should need to actally commit a crime before something is illegal, I should be able to do a port scan (a specific port that is open on my computer) to locate my computer. Once located, my computer will respond (on said port) with a message that only my computer will generate. According to you, I've broken the law. Back in the real world, where I've had to do such things, I'm certainly not a criminal. You on the other hand are trying to make me one. For what?
As someone else clearly stated, there are already laws in place that completely address these issues. Port scanning in no shape or form should EVERY be made illegal. Let's say that it is illegal. How is it going to stop someone from doing it? Will it keep your system safer? No! Will it create problems will spoofed scans. Yes! Does is have any real value? No! So why would you want such completely obtuse law that does absolutely NOTHING for you or your computer. You make no sense.
You're attempting to dodge the bullet and didn't answer a single question. Your soltion isn't viable. It simple doesn't work for the situation. I gave you a perfectly good reason to do this. Period. The simple fact is, you are unable to justify your answer. You'd rather try to poke holes in a real world problem (which you didn't fix by any leap of the imagination - eithe mine or by making port scanning illegal) by living in an imaginary world where everyone is out to get YOU! Simply put, there are VERY valid reasons for ports to be scanned. Period. Try answering some of the questions raised in the first post before you bother to defend your self and take odd ball shots elsewhere.
For some reason, when it comes to things like this people first try to place their house or other private property into the formula when it's pretty well understood that the Internet is a public place. If you are using ANY idiom comparing private property and the Internet, you are more than likely giving a bad example.
Port scanning is the real-world equivalent of going up, testing the door knob, and walking in if it's unlocked.
I'd say that when it comes to real world mataphores, this is probably the most used, abused and stupid one.Port scanning has nothing to do with breaking in. It's looking. How am I supposed to know that you've got a public FTP server running? Or a website? Or a mail address? By checking of course.
I refuse to make a real world analogy for port scanning, because all I've seen so far has been quite stupid (although not at the very same level as this one).
Heh, besides... define "port scanning" please
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May we live long and die out
...this article argues that computer security law would be more coherent and protect equity more predictably if it treated the Internet as if it were physical place--cyberspace
Gee, it sure would be nice and convenient if we could pretend that the Internet was a physical place. But it's not. And no amount of wishful thinking will make it.
It's hard to make laws regarding cyberspace. Deal with it; don't wish the problem away.
Kevin
And, they're not communicating their game plans in an obvious way. Port scanning is legal because there's no precedent for defining that a particular permanent IP is providing anonymous services for applications that aren't commonplace. With a secure web-application, a user-password attack could probably be argued, since demonstration of malice could be asserted and that server has established that it provides secure web access.
What about rpc, though? The problem with the property assertion is that it establishes the fence metaphor but without a tie-in for those in a certain physical access zone who do have access. So what, then? The trespassing sign would say, you can jump the fence if you live within 2 blocks of me, but, otherwise, not? Clearly, the metaphor needs further definition. ex.: I allow mountd from 192.168.1.0, 10.0.0.0 but, firewall it from anything else. So, a DENY rule triggers an alert, and, I have to go track down the ISP abuse account to let someone know.
Now, the Admin (an NT/2k, sort) and I exchange e-mails about what's port 111 and I don't understand why you're upset about my end-user trying to do file-sharing on your host. Of course an nfs mount doesn't trigger the same pop-up that an attempt to mount an NT/2K share does, so we're talking about different beasts and the implementation hasn't evolved to that point, yet, where we can strategically produce end-users with a NO TRESPASSING sign that suits the situation.
Implementation of such a mechanism would be equally problematic because if we offer a challenge to their request to use our nfs server, we're going to need to connect to a suspect port on their server/proxy/firewall, which will initiate another dubious service request query from their provider. It's not all put together in a way that solves these problems, yet.
The problem with making a scan illegal is that those who've done any research know that if they get a printer/mount/anon-ftp sequence on a server that's running IDS from a particular ip within a reasonably short period of time know they're getting checked on by a vulnerability assessment script. How do you distinguish that from a simple potentially legitimate nfs connect request?
Short answer: You can't. Because that connection request for port 111 might have been initiated by someone who just loaded up the latest RedHat and wanted to do some nfs updates from some server and their dns server was configured to look at where updates.redhat.com was 6 months ago, and, you just happened to get that IP the last time your router initiated a dhcp request. Who knows?
The point is, you can't apply voodoo law when the network is still a lot of voodoo being implemented by newbie witch doctors.
Port scanning is legal. No, I don't like it. But, you can do something about it. You just can't sue anyone if they try it and break into your server. Bummer, huh? >:)
Linux rocks!!! www.dedserius.com
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
And if law were more like open source, it would be better?! Don't get me wrong... open source is fine for open source but not necessarily for law.
Imagine a system of law in which each person could set up their own government, a system of rules to which nobody else had to conform or comply. Imagine the few most popular standards were only useable by the legislators and legal pundits for twenty or thirty years while the bugs were worked out. The general public wouldn't have the understanding to try any of the several governing distributions by themselves, so they'd have to rely on more experienced people to set up their systems. Over the years, hot contentions would organize blocs of specialists who fought for only one or two standards, even though the underlying system was still supposedly a free-to-be-an-individual system.
Hm, the more I look at it, the US government resembles open source, too.
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Well that's completely different.
Portscanning dial-up hosts and portscanning a potential service provider with a fixed IP could arguably be for different reasons. ie, easy-to-own systems run by rookies, vs. professionally (paid) run servers.
But the fact of the matter is ... does driving down the road and looking at house doors to see if they are open cause me to become a criminal? If they don't want me to see their front door, plant a tree in the way!
Agreed! The majority of my targets for nmap are local hosts that I own and administer. If I want to know if a port is open, nmap is my first thought. It saves the hassle of connecting to that host and running 'netstat -lp' and deciphering the list.
nmap is a network exploration tool, and it comes in very handy debugging my network and finding out what ports are open or shut.
It is fairly easy to create a system whereby the DNS can be updated with your machine's current IP.
I have yet to document the system I use for a friend, but it allows his system to automatically update my DNS server with his current DHCP assigned address. Those changes are then propogated to the other DNS server. TTL = 300, reload every 900 seconds.
But that's kinda off-topic. Back on topic ... port scanning can be expected, so don't look so surprised. There are many legitimate, and many illegitimate reasons for scanning. The values outweigh the risks. Put a lock on your door. Use a firewall. Smile for the cameras. Your mileage may vary.
The correct analogy would be looking at the house, and seeing if there are doors and if there are windows. A portscan is only a preliminary surveillance to an attack, and only maps out the possible points of entry. The analogy does differ, however, with the fact that when you are portscanned, you can know it is happening.
Shouldn't slashdot be making original material? This is copied straight out of kuro5hin. At least put a reference to K5 if you're gonna cutnpaste!
You might have some difficulty proving anything if the guy only hit your telnet or FTP port once.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I don't think portscanners are in anyway related to gun laws.
If you want to draw comparison i would suggest night vision googles with a gun vs nmap with a root script.
Nmap is a useful tool but guns in the hands of the irresponsible is not a tool it is a weapon it causes injury and death.
Nmap just like the googles lets you see. The googles can let you attack someone in the dark but unless you use the googles by striking it at the person the googles does not do harm. Nmap no matter how you look at it can hardly be used to cause damage to a server directly. That's what different from guns and nmap.
Parts of the population of the USA have really strange notions of right, wrong, good and bad. They complain about other countries but at the same time they are not perfect. Some states still have the death penalty.
Take guns and death penalty for example. You have the death penalty for murder and other terrible crimes in some states. At the same time you have tons of guns floating around. A criminal has a gun and he's going to use the gun. As he's armed he expects that the police will shoot at him and he might get killed. So if he ends up in a shoot out with cops he can either die in the fight slowly bleeding to death or die later in a nice clean room painlessly due to leathal injection. So in what ways does the death penalty acts to prevent this guy from commiting crimes?
Yes and that's is why is high school chemistry labs we should allow children access to dangerous chemicals without supervision.
Your point goes both ways. And your use of it is faulty because like other dangerious items allowing it to be carried and used by faulty humans allows bad things to happen. You don't see people walking around with h-bombs do you? I mean gee we have used the idea of MAD for so long less attach h-bombs to ourselves and dare people to try to do harm to us! Gee what a great idea.. i am sure Mr Bush will write a new law for that!
I think you have intent confused with method. A port scan is a method by which you determine open ports on a host. There are many types of port scans. There are also many reasons for port scans.
I could scan for a single port (like 80) over an entire class C block, or scan ports 1-1024 on a single host. Who is to say that I am prepairing to crack someone's system? The system's owner? Simson Garfinkel? Janet Reno? Hell no! I alone know what my intentions are.
If you don't want people to port scan you, use a firewall. Better yet, stay off the internet. Otherwise, secure your machine. Laws can't stop crackers, but security can. It's stupid to assume that you won't get port scanned because it's illegal, or wrong.
The "House Analogy" is fundamentally flawed, and needs to be s**tcanned. It assumes that packets on a packet switching network can "trespass" in the real world sense, and that we need to legislate a solution to a technological problem. TCP/IP allows for some intended and unintended functionality. You have the power to regulate how and if other computers talk to your computer. Use it. No stupid law can take the place of good security.
Since when did a port scan constitute an attempt to gain access? You can't know that until AFTER the scan is completed, and an access attempt is made. At that point, the law is almost certainly being broken. Otherwise, you can't gauge intent.
I've done port scans several times for very valid reasons:
1: For my current job, we were trying to set up a VPN. When I got home, I realized I didn't remember the exact IP address of the machine we had set up the VPN on, so I did a port scan of some IP addresses. Our office has 8 (I believe) real IP addresses, and I'm not sure which ones they were out of the 255 that I scanned, but I finally found the server with the expected ports exposed, and then was able to start testing the VPN (which we still don't have working, but I digress)
2: I have a friend who isn't really technically oriented. He runs two small ISPs in Mexico, one of which I used to work for. The one I worked for sold out, and he bought it, because they were the providers for his ISP in another town and he needed to maintain his service, which was running quite well, before that time.
When he bought his provider, he was having trouble setting up and configuring certain machines. As part of the diagnostics, I was doing port scans, from the U.S., on various machines to check to make sure services were running.
Now.... Who decides my port scanning was illegal? The provider for my company? My ISP? The providers in Mexico for the ISP I was scanning?
Port scanners are tools. Like an ice pick, you can use it for good or bad. I agree there are a lot of people that use them for trying to hack into machines. The actual act of port scanning shouldn't be illegal, though. There are just too many legitimate uses for port scanning. Isn't this the argument Napster used to stay in business? Fair use? I didn't hear many people here complaining about fair use in Napster's case, and let's face it, they were certainly enabling a great deal of piracy. Did they have a fair use right? I think so, despite the great deal of piracy. (and to digress again, I think they actually helped the music industry, despite its claims.)
Another user mentioned checking the security of a potential host. I find this to be a perfectly legitimate use. If you're putting money in a bank, you're going to put it in First Union, Citibank, etc. You're not going to put it in Fred's Bank, unless you've checked out Fred's bank and you know Fred's real tight on security.
Owning an knife is not against the law. Stabbing someone with the knife is. Port scanners are no different and shouldn't be treated any different (though I grant, it's harder to stab someone with a port scanner). And the laws for use of port scanners should be just as applicable and sensible as they are regarding the use of knives. If you use it for legitimate purposes and cause no harm, then what's the problem?
If you hack into a system and do damage, that's clearly against the law, and that's all there is to it.
Kinda like if you're worried about someone trying to start a conversation with you, you shouldn't go outside.
/. any time this century. So both taste and touch are also out, because they do not provide applicable metaphors.
Starts rant:
Shooting and killing people doesn't have any legitimate purposes. Portscanning a computer does, so please stop obscuring the argument with absurd metaphors. In fact, I'd prefer it if people stopped using metaphors for portscanning all together, because there simply aren't any that simplify the situation. Here's why:
Portscanning: send some tcp/ip packet to a specific port on a target host and see if/how it responds. Let's compare this to the five senses: First: sight, smell and hearing are out, because they are passive: they don't send out anything and see how objects respond. Second: taste and touch. They might qualify on the grounds of being active: you put something in your mouth to taste it and you might press your fingers against that Rembrandt in the museum to actually feel the layers of paint.
So lets explore taste and touch a bit further. In real life tasting or touching someone's private property is not normal behaviour and will usually be considered an invasion of privacy (well, the neighbours might actually be getting used to me licking their car, but this I will mark an exception to the common case). On the internet however these kind of active senses are required: you can sit there waiting for some webserver to contact you, but don't expect your posts to show up on
I think I've successfully argued that you must do the online equivalent of tasting the slashdot server to get it to do anything useful and that all methaphors based on any of the senses break up when applied to the internet. From this I will conclude that no metaphor will be both applicable to the online situation and be intuitive (metaphors based on anything but real-life situations that you observe through your senses could hardly be called intuitive, now could they?) and thus we can now stop using metaphors from our daily lives to describe online events and portscanning in particular.
Ends rant.
If there is hope, it lies in the trolls.
Let's keep in mind that the author is not actually a lawyer yet, despite being published in the journal.
Screw knocking on doors. The way I see it, portscanning is akin to driving down a street (the host) and writing down which street addresses (ports) have houses at them. If someone did this in my neighborhood, I certainly wouldn't bother them, nor would I call the cops. They're not jiggling my door knob, and they certainly don't have the keys to my house. This is absolutely ridiculous.
If my fiiend moves into an apartment, and I do not know what apartment it is, can I not look around at the mailroom for his name?
THERE. I've proven my point by inventing another analogy. Arguments by analogy do not work. Forget it!
RANT: None of you geeks here have any clue about how to make logical arguments. I see nobody attempting to see what port-scanning consists of, and how you can distinguish it from normal traffic on the net.
The facts of the matter is this: port scans don't look very different from normal connect attempts, except by their sheer volume. Even that volume can be controlled by the perpetrator. I can portscan you one port a day, one packet per day if I was patient and want to be undetected. It would no sense to make laws you can't enforce, and without port-scanning, a lot of the early internet would never have been discovered.
Cracking into computers is already illegal. All I see is people attempting to increase the scope of the law without any knowledge of what is happening.
It is a very well known fact that most security breaches are not those that result from of the remote exploit. In fact, most breaches are due to user cluelessness or employee abuse of previliges.
All these whining and shouting about portscannning does not address the most important of security flaws - the people. After all, it is just the security aspects about portscanning which bother you, right ?
It is true tha people running portscans probably have evil intentions. But the reverse does not apply - being portscanned does not therefore imply that you are probably being set up for evil. These are two distinct probabilities, related only by Bayes Theorem - ever heard of that?
Please learn some elementary logic and probability and stop embarrasing yourself. Impunging dishonesty when that is none is simply irrational.
I had not realized that the difference between evil-intentioned portscanning and innocuous portscanning was one of VOLUME. Thanks for the heads up!
Yeah! Exactly. See that bastard walking up that our driveway like the road belonged to him. Just shoot him sonny, like your Pa tells you to.
I have been hacked too, and I wished the people who I warned had been more responsible. Unfortunately, there are just as many irresponsible SysAd's as there are irreponsible script kiddies.
But these are distinct questions from decicing portscanning itself should be outlawed or not.
Whee.. finally! I get to hack something together to jam all communications in a city-wide area! Finally I get to watch Slashdot and similar sites fall prey to a wonderous Microsoft DoS attack. Finally I get to watch the last vestiges of trust on the Internet get blown out of the window.
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You don't hear of people making a distinction between "the letter of the program" and "the spirit of the program,"
.oO0Oo.
I'm not trying to contradict but I find it interesting.
The source code is the 'spririt' of the program. Variable name & function name choice & comments should convey this spirit. The legislators (compiler & linkers) turn the spirit into the letter. When a program fails it is passed to a higher power (the user) for adjudication. If the user can't sort it out s/he can pass it up a level (local guru). And so on until it reaches the supreme power, the author.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If portscans are outlawed, then the overall security of your site receives additional protection
.oO0Oo.
hmm, bad thinking.
I don't leave my doors unlocked thinking "burglary is illegal so I'm safe"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Repeat after me:
Legislating is not programming.
Here's why:
This would be an exceptionally bad idea, and would set telecommunications law back at least 75 years (before Tribune Co. v. Oak Leaves Broadcasting, which dealt with a dispute concerning two broadcasters using interfering wavelengths).
I predict that this could set the record for the highest percentage of replies from people who didn't read the article.
Can someone point out to me where the article claims that nmap, or port scanning, is currently illegal? (Bonus points if you show evidence contrary to the claim. Hint: Moulton did not hold that port scanning was legal; it held that the claimant didn't show damages to the court's satisfaction, and specifically said that Moulton may be subject to criminal prosecution under the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act.)
Such a focus on property rights, as opposed to torts, is a characteristic of right-wing interpretations of law. Lawrence Lessig, for example, focuses less on property rights when writing about the same issues.
The article uses the phrase "trusted systems" to describe software which prevents the owner of the computer from doing something with protected content. That's a painful expression. He does, though, raise questions as to how intrusive a copy protection system can be before it violates the property rights of the computer owner. That's a key point for the Linux crowd. Do you have the right to run protected content in a virtual machine which keeps the protected content from crippling the whole system?
quick question, hopefully someone can point me in the right direction for the appropriate statutes or definitions:
a while ago, i had constructed a parody website of a private institution's webpage. the webpage itself was probably illegal, in that the majority of the data on the website could be construed as violating copyright laws. that aside (and maybe that's a big "that aside" to assume, but still, this is the focus of my question):
the private institution learned about the existence of the page via a screenshot from one of my ill-remembered ex-friends, and immediately sought to gain access to the page. being that the page itself was available on the web, i think that this doesn't cross the line for freely available information - after all, that was the idea, for people to access the page freely. except, it wasn't.
i had password protected the site itself long ago, in a series of password challenges and perl includes after a successful entry. of course, the files themselves could still be viewed if you guessed the source file correctly. this is what they attempted to do.
over the course of several hours (an entire day) they randomly guessed at filenames in the directory containing the site, but were unsuccessful. the attempts are comical. i actually posted the logs of the "hack" on my website here, but figured i should take them down as other actions were pending against me for the site itself.
the point is, their actions probably weren't criminal, but they were intentional, malicious, and, ultimately, unsuccessful. could the fact that they did so allow action against them on my behalf?
any info appreciated.
We have a server set up at work to be a honeypot. It has one DNS entry, but is not linked to by anything, is not advertised in any way, is not pointed to by any MX, NS or other service type record. In other words, nobody who's not specifically doing blanket scans should ever find it. When somebody tries to interact with a service on it, say, FTP, not only does it keep a full record of the session, it also portscans them, fingers them, WHOISs them, tries to get banners from their FTP, mail, and web servers, and all that good stuff. Why? Because there is NO reason that anybody would ever hit it. So we want to know about the people who are.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I think it would be so send packets to certain ports just to get a reply, or lack thereof. But that would actually be pretty hard to prove, a scanner cuold just send HTTP request packets, and the scanner could claim he was just browsing and typing in a portnumber, or that happening for some strange reason, probably wouldn't hold any ground in court though.. but it's quite hard to define what a portscan is, if the scanner/attacker actually tries to hide it..
"If anyone needs me, I'm in the angry dome."
"Ringing a doorbell" is a single probe on port 80.
I'd add https port 443 to that list, but I personally know a couple sysadmins who consider one request for connection on port 80 or 443 while the web server is temporarily down to be grounds for banning your IP.
Will I retire or break 10K?
After reading through much of the article, I still fail to see how scanning a host's ports is any different from knocking on that host's various doors and windows, seeing if anybody's home, or giving that host's various telephone lines a ring. If you don't want people coming through a doorway, lock the door.
If the right to portscan is overturned, how will a potential customer be able to discover whether or not the owner of a given host has given permission to connect via HTTP, FTP, SMTP, etc.?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Slashdot NEVER gave you premission to connect to port 80 on their machine, yet you blanatly have TX/RX packets to/from slashdot without premission!!
What the hell is your problem, just because slashdot is connected to the internet doesn't give you premission to go around probing and packeting up it's port 80!
You are probably one of those noisy bastards that also 'cracks' ftp on server, logging in as anonymous and downloading loads of free software without getting premission from the site owner to do so. Looking at the PC that runs ftp.cdrom.com, the owner of this site has been thoughly abused without giving anyone premission to go probing up it's ftp port
Worst yet, you probably just point and click random links on the web and probe up people's boxen without premission!
and after you get done with all your probing and packing their ports you probably don't even call them in the morning...
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
2 insightfully? You crack smoking moderators better mod this up some more, it is VERY insightfully. I didn't know he liked penis... very informative and insightfully. Keep up the good work.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Personally, I've thought that the emphasis is placed on the wrong side of the "fence", so to speak. Portscanning doesn't strike me as a strict liability - i.e. you don't break the law just by doing it (as opposed to, say, parking violations). An example would be portscanning with the the intent to expose an RPC vulnerability and then to exploit that vulnerability. The emphasis here is on the intent of the action, with consideration given to context. Sysadmins scanning their systems for open known-vulnerable ports would be okay - they're scanning in a legitimate context. Script kiddies may too be okay in certain cases. They have a portscan util and they press "go". Those that have no intention of breaking in to systems == no intent, but the real illegal crackers out there get busted on the intent front.
Trickier than strict liability to prove, but perhaps more accurate?
--
Tarkwyn.
The constant scanning of public web servers is real. Several times I have rigorously backtracked sources of significant scanning over a few days, and most of the originating IPs were overseas. Many from Korea.
How does this legal structure help reduce scanning from overseas?
I realize that you meant this as a joke (hopefully), but try to make jokes that are at least coherent and make sense to the world-wise audience of Slashdot. ...Fear my squirrely powers...
Now I disagree with old Mark that all system administrators are idiots. Its just that those who are worth anything tend to move on fairly quickly these days. This kind of legal stupidity has much to do with that.
--
--
You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home.
Seems to me that the people doing portscans are doing it for one of two reasons:
1. Testing the security of a system, possibly their own. No intent to do anything malicious or illegal. Why would this need to be stopped?
2. Trying to do something _else_ illegal.
Analogy: Make looking into car windows illegal. Now that it is illegal for the car theif to look in the window for anti-theft devices, you think he's going to stop stealing cars?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Hmm, it seems to be the case you already have a counter-measure to stop port scanners that doesn't involve the legal system and the issues that result from that (restriction of freedom, making yet more people into criminals, further burdening the already extremely overburdened police and courts who have MUCH more serious issues to deal with than someone running NMAP, etc).
With that in mind, you don't need to use the law in this case... you already have a better solution. Judicial solutions should be the last resort.
If someone breaks in, you can have them prosecuted in any court with jurisdiction, even if they did no damage.
P.S. If I were to go to the police because of the people trying to connect to various ports on my computer - I'd gather the police would either laugh or be annoyed. Never mind that I'd be spending a few dozen hours each week going to the police station. Or worse... The last attempt (less than 24 hours ago) appears to have come from Asia. I'm not even thinking of calling Interpol.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Exactly my point. If the person who wrote the article was your judge, you would have gone free. As for what you did, since it was unlocked, would that properly be prosecuted as Tresspassing rather than Breaking and Entering? Still a crime, albeit a lesser one. (not a subtle distinction - B&E is often a felony, Tresspass a misdemeanor) Any lawyers care to comment?
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
2 problems:
(1)Lack of security is an excuse to break in. If someone leaves the root password unset on a machine, or leaves off the security on their web server, the above would say it is legal to access whatever you want on that system - whether it is meant to be private or even if one is explicitly told it is private.
Imagine the prosecutor letting someone who robbed you go free because you "didn't take precautions" (e.g. left personal belongs for a second, etc).
(2) It legitimizes making technical measures have the force of law. If I (as an private citizen) have the technical ability to stop you from entering a public park, should you get arrested for going there anywhere? Heck no. In fact, I wouldn't be allowed to even use technical measures to stop you. That is why the DMCA is so bad. Copyright is limited by fair use - fair use activities are not trespass, they are more like entering a public easement on a property where such is allowed by law. If I as a property owner in the real world block access to an easement (try to build a wall on a road crossing my property), not only do people not get arrested for breaking down/circumventing/destroying the wall, I'll get arrested for building it.
The DMCA turns that common sense notion upside down - the wall builder is ALWAYS right, the others are ALWAYS criminal.
That article seems to feed that thinking.
I am not a lawyer, but I understand common sense - which puts me above most of Congress.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool
SealBeater br>
-- Its survival of the fittest...and we got the fucking guns!!!
Have you ever heard of a proxy server?
Nuf said.
Grc, oh please. the guy is a gimp. I'm sure not crying about the DDos he's suffereing.
as for portscanning being an attack, it's not. someone may simply be trying to find out what services are available on your system out of curiosity. it's an information gathering tool, if you wanna outlaw those, you might as well limit yourself to JUST surfing the web. forget all the OTHER stuff there is to do on the internet and the hundreds of valid reasons to portscan an IP.
how you got moded as insightfull I'll never know.
If you're hearing rhetoric about Linux, open source, or Mac and everyone's bashing Microsoft, you've found Slashdot.
Killing people might actually have a useful purpose once in a while. But I still like the idea of keeping it illegal.
Except for the fact that "killing" is not illegal. murder (and manslaughter, etc) is illegal. You only need to look at the fact that killing in self defense (or during war, whatever) is legal to see how bogus your statement is. So yes, the act of killing, in and of itself, is not illegal. This is why it's called murder (et al) instead of killing.
Matt
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
Neither Congress nor the States shall make any law restricting the right of the People to do whatever they wish with electromagnetic waves.
If you want to be on a network or a circuit, fine. Protect yourself with all due security but don't come crying to the gubmint if you don't like "hackers" and you failed to secure your systems.
You want to broadcast television or radio. Fine, but you won't be able to restrict what anybody does with that signal.
You want to broadcast digitized video from a satellite? Fine, but make sure your encryption is implemented properly and don't come crying to the gubmint if somebody figures out how to decrypt your signal without your authorization.
We don't need more laws. We need less. Business should take care of its own problems and not enlist the help of government to get them what they are too incompetent and foolish to get for themselves.
By saying that others are not allowed to portscan your machine, when you detect a portscan yourself, you are allowed to call in the authorities to try and track down the portscanner. You can take preemptive measure against someone who is trying to break into your system thanks to the portscan.
Not that I'm suggesting that the authorities will be any more effective now than before, but if portscanning others machines is made illegal, that actually gives you the sysadmin additional tools, not fewer. (Well, in the case of the FBI and their effectiveness against crackers, it's not a very useful tool, but, well, it's something...)
--
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
I think it depends on which port number. I wouldn't bust anyone trying to connect to port 80 or 21 I wouldn't complain too much. But last year, I managed to get a fellow @home user's account terminated because he was snooping around 31337 and 12345.
Slashdot: come for the pedantry, stay for the condescension.
Since they're doing it from Korea, China, and Ghana, the fact that it might be illegal here doesn't help your security much.
Or, to put it another way, since you're going to have to secure your systems anyway, why bother trying to make something illegal that actually might have a useful purpose once in a while?
I think my favorite expression on this is:
If guns kill people.... then, pencils misspell words, cars make people drive drunk, and spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat.
If you want to know anything about someone else, you have to ask. However, some people get offended if you ask them certain questions, so rather than ignoring such questions, those people want to make it illegal to ask any question, instead they want you to ask only one question "what are you like" and they will provide only the information they want.
They do not want you to be able to ask a total stranger specific questions, even if what you want to know is unusual and so not often included in the answer to "what are you like".
The internet is a public network, anything you connect to it is exposed for public access. Anything you do not want accessed by the public should not be made accessable on the public interface.
Why should I have to put up with repeated port scans?
Because you choose to put your box on a public network. If you don't want people looking at your box, feel free to pay for a private connection.
Those people aren't trying to connect to ports 111, 161, etc to do me a favour by testing my security. They're trying to break in!
No, they are just looking. If they find a flaw they can exploit, and then make the attempt to exploit it, THEN they are trying to break in. Certainly cruising a neighborhood casing the houses is suspicious, but its not illegal (in general, depending on where you are. Some communities have such rules).
If you don't want people looking at a public interface, don't put one up.
guns can only be used to harm others
:)
Here's a news flash, Chester... sometimes an individual will need to harm or even kill another person for the greater good. You can say that isn't so all you want but it won't make it true. You can believe it with every fiber of your being, but you would still be wrong. Sometimes, violence isn't just a solution, it's the only solution.
I sincerely hope your delicate worldview is never harmed though. I'd never wish misfortune on another person, but that's probably what it will take to get you to change your mind.
(I've had an unarmed friend killed by armed robbers, despite her compliance with their demands, so please don't tell me that cooperating with a bad guy insures your safety.)
If you want to argue about guns, there are a lot of other better ways to go about it. Weapons aren't evil. They are tools, and like any tool they can be use or abused.
Find me one person who shoots his own house to test its defenses...
Heh, my urban fortress isn't ready for stress-testing yet.
(And thanks for reminding me to finish my concealed weapons permit paperwork. I've been putting it off.)
There is no greater good.
;)
Another point to debate. I think that there is, and that the Common Man can serve it, partially by shooting Bad Guys if forced to. But hey, to each his own.
But as far as guns go, you're statistically much more likely to shoot yourself, family, or a friend, than an attacker.
For each study that concludes that there is another that refutes it. Personally, I have a great deal of faith in my training and judgement. I take it all very seriously and see myself as responsible for the safety of those around me. But it's a personal thing and I don't think that gun ownership is the right choice for everyone.
I'm sure many people have saved themselves against attackers using their guns. I'm willing to bet that a whole lot more people have been killed as a result of provoking an attacker or in an accident at home.
Sure, there are always accidents. But there are not as many as some people would have you think. (there are many sets of contradictory studies, as always in this field.)
As to the viability of resisting -- check into Gary Kleck's research. Here's a summary from a page I found, it should be easy to google for more if you are curious.
"Kleck found that victims who resist with a gun are less likely to be attacked, injured, or suffer property losses, than those who use any other means of self-protection, or who do not resist an attack - even when confronted by an attacker armed with a gun. Furthermore, Kleck concluded from existing data that armed defenders lose their guns to an attacker less than 1% of the time."
An author named Paxton Quigley quotes some other stats that are specifically about the viability of women resisting attackers, and her conclusion is also that it is the better course of action.
I'm just saying that if you're looking to improve your personal safety, there are better choices. Martial arts, for instance. It's much harder for your kid to accidentally pick up your fist and beat himself to death with it.
BIG GUY: Give me your money or I will bleed you.
SMALL GUY: Crap, ok. Please don't hurt m-- OW, DEAR GOD, SOMEONE HELP ME!
I do not believe that fists can beat a gun often enough to go down that road myself. I have done enough martial arts and enough competitive pistol shooting to know which one I would rather rely on!!
The kid thing -- well, I don't have kids. Too bad more people aren't as cautious that way as you seem to be though. Kids and guns don't mix, I can agree with that.
that analogy doesn't work perfectly because computers aren't people. they have different senses.
Our most hands-off sense is sight. It relies on photons bounced off something else. It's passive unless you use a light source. But a computer can't see another computer on a network. A computer is blind, so to speak. It has to walk up to that other computer, in a way, and feel it up to learn anything about it at all.
I don't think portscanning should be illegal, since it's representative of the the most basic way to learn about another system.
Would feeling around the outside of a building, looking for a doorway, be illegal if humans were all blind? Probably not. If touch is all you have, the laws would be a little different.
Also, another poster said that any computer attached to a public network is fair game. Ok, here's a stupid analogy: "If you park your car on a public street, you should expect it to be stolen". Do you keep your car always locked up in a garage? How about "if you drive your car down a public street, you should expect to get carjacked. If you don't want to get carjacked, don't drive it on a public street! Build your own private street to drive on!".
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You can do whatever you like with your computers, but you have no right to try to break into other people's computers. All the people who think that portscanning is a right and that the Constitution should have a new amendment guaranteeing the right to bear portscanners, post your IP addresses here and we'll see how many scans you get. Don't worry! The script kiddies are only seeing if they CAN break into your computer! They won't actually break into it.
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Guns don't protect people; people protect people.
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It's sort of like the difference between sending an email to your friend, or sending thousands of emails to thousands of people you don't know asking them if they'd like to "MAKE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A WEEK WORKING FROM HOME!!1!". Or do you think that spamming is ok too?
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So what's your problem?
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As for permission, who do you think should decide who has got permission to use your computer? Should it be you, or some script kiddie? You aren't seriously saying that you find websites and ftp sites by portscanning computers, are you? You find them by doing a web search. The "whatever" connections are the ones that the script kiddies are very keen to find. My computer is on the internet for me to use. It's my computer. I'm not giving anybody else permission to use it. The permissions are established by law. Unauthorised access to a computer is a crime.
The difference between making an http connection and portscanning is quite similar to the difference between sending an email and spamming. And why should I be held to a higher standard than the other posters who are talking about "rattling doors", "opening windows", "ringing doorbells", "crawling in attics", etc, etc, etc?
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A few weeks ago, I reported a scan that came from a very large university. One of the most well-known computer science universities in the world. A few days later, I got an email back thanking me because due to me reporting the scan, they discovered that intruders had cracked the machine, and were attempting to break into other machines around the world. Not many people can tell if they are being portscanned, and many of those same people also can't tell if an intruder has compromised their machine's security. Sooner or later, crackers are going to take control of some important computers using these compromised machines as a launching pad. Important computers like banks, stock exchanges, emergency services, or maybe even military computers. That's why we all need to take portscanning seriously and stamp it out. Before a lot of people lose a lot of money, or are killed.
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Portscanning should be considered a crime.
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Just out of curiosity, SPQR == Senatus Populusque Romano?
You cannot proceed from the informal to formal by formal means
Today, its illegal, tommorow its legal, round and round we go. Does these mean that I have to stop port scanning my ISPs port scanner ?
Which leads me to my point. ISPs around the world are scaning there customers all day long. Does this mean its illegal for them as well ? As many people bellow said, how many ports need to be scanned before its a port scan ? Lets say my budy has a Q3A server. Its not on a standard port, so I try 27961 - 27970, oh no ... I just did a port scan, or did I ? I am brute forcing a connection to a series of ports on another computer I don't own.
So, if programs like nmap are "illegal" does that mean also for the people who do use it for legal purposes. What happens if me and a friend are setting up a server, we want to know whats open .... so we scan it real quick.
There are soooo many loop holes in this.
until (succeed) try { again(); }
until (succeed) try { again(); }
>>What about 50 TCP requests to a computer to 50 different ports in one second?
/.er decides to post a link to www.myrandomscan.com that generates a page that includes 200 "images" to be retrieved from some random IP on random ports. Who is doing the scanning? Infact, if the page is well designed and hosted in an appropriate country you could probably get the person who clicked on the link under 3 or 4 laws at once :-)
:-)
>This is gray, but it's a pretty dark shade of gray. Note that in general speed is less of an issue than spread
And what if some
(It's a change on goatse.cx anyway
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
A long time programming friend of mine mentioned that the most useful courses he took outside of the programming course were a business law course, just to cover the basics of things like this, and a business accounting course, just to get his mind wrapped around modelling what bean counters were doing in the first place.
You would think with all of the legal issues running around, technical types could spend time just to get a toe wet, and get some familiarity with the concepts. It seems very much worth it.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I see port scanning as crawling around someone's house rattling doorknobs, windows, mailboxes, air ducts, rooftop hatches, basement doors, garage doors, electric panel doors, gas valves, water valves, sewer vent lines, outdoor outlets, chimney openings, stove vents. Trying all 256 codes on RF X-10 modules, using a frequency counter/scanner to check for and listen in on radio transmissions, ringing phone lines, ringing doorbells, seeing if you can turn on sprinklers/water faucets, etc.
Would you have no problem with someone doing all that? That's a port scan.
"Ringing a doorbell" is a single probe on port 80. "Ring a telephone" is a single probe on port 23. Don't bullshit yourself.
... and as such, it has its uses, both good and bad. In and of itself, it should NOT be made illegal. Only illegal or criminal USES of portscanning should be made illegal.
Example:
I walk into my local computer repair shop. I'm casually looking around, and I notice that they have a security camera, and what appears to be a motion detector. I don't know about you, but seeing that kind of equipment sure makes me feel better about leaving my computer there. What I've just done isn't in any way, shape, or form, illegal.
Now, suppose that a criminal does the same thing; he goes in, scopes that there's a security cam and a motion detector. He makes notes of these, and later that night, comes back, and FOREWARNED about your security measures, breaks into the store, bypasses them (we'll assume he's a clever criminal), and makes off with the goods. What he's done is illegal.
Gaining the knowledge ISN'T illegal! Using it for illegal purposes IS! THIS is what so many people miss when they talk about outlawing portscanning.
Stupidity, however, appears to be protected by law.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I can't define port scanning....but I know it when I see it....
"It's technical in a psychometric kind a way" -- C. Parish
No to nitpick or anything but the TCP/IP protocol suite does only have 4 layers. You are referring to the OSI 7 layer model of network communications which the TCP/IP does not follow. The four layer model roughly maps to the OSI model on several layers but does not actually implement the full definition.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
While the debate over allowing anonymous portscans will probably continue as long as computer networks exist, I can see this as a "bad thing" for people at large. If customers are prevented from examining the security of online business, it becomes difficult to make informed decisions regarding who to trust with your money|data|business. With the growing trend towards the ASP model of computing, independant verification of a site's security becomes more important when choosing a vendor. Just like EULA's which ban the unauthorized publishing of benchmarks, the inability to portscan hampers a consumers ability to make an informed choice. The security model of trust will devolve into a "don't worry, trust us" state where you are at the mercy of the claims of security assembled by the marketing department without independent verification.
Put another way; would you trust your money to an online bank with open NFS shares or your business data to an ASP using snmp and "public" community strings? Would you know?
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
_UNAUTHORIZED_ portscanning should be illegal. If testing your own system or if a friend asks you to test his system, thats one thing. However, portscanning without permission (whether for legal purposes or not) should be illegal. These "casing" techniques are a crucial step in the takeover of any system. Its alot harder to crack something when you're going in deaf and blind. I think this is a step in the right direction. Computers are allowed to give out too much info as is. Magius_AR
so why doesn't "keeping the government honest" also include defending yourself against the local punks; the government obviously isn't there to defend you.
My understanding is that portscanning is more akin to the 'door knocking' that other people have mentioned here as well. Does a machine respond on port X, X1, X2, Xn... ?
While that's useful, there are more dangerous exploits to be used against common ports already - there are numerous port 80 exploits against IIS boxes, sendmail and bind exploits against unix boxes, etc. You don't need to 'portscan' (in my understanding of the word) to do damage. You already KNOW the port.
Am I missing something?
creation science book
Regarding 4 layers, they're in reference to the DoD model, for which TCP/IP was first defined, pre-OSI. Of course, you're right that they they used the wrong names for the layers (using the OSI layer names), whereas the correct DOD names are Process (OSI 5-7), Host-to-Host (OSI Transport layer 4), Internet (OSI Network layer 3), and Network (OSI 1-2).
The only reason I can recall this so well is having to teach Network+ classes.
http://packetderm.cotse.com/CIE/Topics/16.htm
Defamation laws are a bunch of crap. Anything I say about anyone -- whether it be true or false or opinion -- I have the right to say. Politicians say false things about eachother all the time, and I have the right to do that to companies. If you say that defamation makes it "illegal" to say false statements about someone, I could be sued for every false statement I ever said about anything -- including spreading gossip. That's a bunch of fucking bullshit. Now, as for opinion, I have the RIGHT to assert my opinions, irrelevant of how it affects some rich corporation(and lets face the fucking truth, defamation laws ONLY work for the rich and powerful).
In short, defamation laws VIOLATE MY RIGHT to FREE SPEECH.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
If I go around my own house and check all my doors and windows to make sure they are locked, then thats my right (my house, my right) If I take it upon myself to do this for my entire neighborhood, I am way out of line. Dont agree...? Try it in your neighborhood. See what happens.
To have any HOPE of effectiveness, you'd have to outlaw portscanning utilities. And give that law enough teeth to allow the stormtroopers (police) the ability to "find out who has them".
Exactly right. And to extend your example, Trojans are surely already illegal? If somebody connects to SubSeven or BackOrrifice and downloads your data and uses your PC to launch a DDoS, that's surely illegal.
But how many scans for trojans does every dialup connection get every time it's online? Making it illegal doesn't make that law enforceable. To do so would require either a Big Brother attitude where everybody's ISP monitors all their traffic, or would consume all the resources of all the police everywhere.
Don't try and stop what you can't stop. Stop the big stuff (actual penetrations).. if you can. But we all know that those people who know how to penetrate properly (as opposed to a script kiddies) are unlikely to be caught unless they make a booboo.
---------------------------
'No rational religion claims "supernatural" exists, that's an atheist slander.' - seen on slashdot.
Forgive my skepticism, but I somehow doubt that it's a simple as that.
How the heck can you prove that the person knocking on the door is doing so just to see if someone's home? Can I call on the phone and see if they answer? Ring a doorbell? Wave at a security camera? What's the difference?
-Bryan
Well by default it does, but if you use any other type of scan, or os detection there will be custom packets sent.
i'd say any unsolicited attempt to connect to a tcp port could count as a port scan - if i try to connect to your machine without you asking me to then I am clearly very likely to be trying to find out information about you and/or your machine. And an "http GET request" is not a port scan.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
Secondly, I consider a port scan to mean an attempt to connect to a particular port or ports on a machine, to see if those ports are open. Performing a GET request goes beyond that definition and so I would not consider it a port scan.
This is similar in attitude to the "admins that dont patch their systems deserve to get cr/hacked", and almost as ridiculous. There is no reason for anyone to be connecting to my machine unless it is something I have either explicitely ("please connect to my machine") or implicitely (eg. setting up a website) asked them to do. The sad fact is that the anonymity that the internet provides means that people seem to consider actions such as portscans as some kind of right and not the malicious invasion of privacy that it actually is.
were you expecting to see a sig here? perhaps you'd rather see the inside of an ambulance!
My stance on Portscanning legal or illegal isn't yet defined--i haven't decided.
But it seems to me, in the spirit of analogies, that even using the same metaphor you can look at in several ways.
One is the door knocking analogy, whereby you go around knocking on doors. This should probably be legal.
However another would be going around a house trying to open all the doors and jiggling the windows looking for vulnerabilites.
Thus it seems to me that intent clearly has to be taken into account.
--
One other point.
It seems that an awful lot of you guys would normally be saying "how dare corporations or the government keep records of me, how dare they invade my personal privacy" yet at the same time argue that a portscanner (ie, invading someone elses privacy) is your god given right. I don't get it.
Scott
I thought the part about the DMCA was particularly interesting. Whether you agree with this guy or not about the property rights metaphor, I think it's quite true that any criticism of laws like the DMCA should be based on an analysis of who is losing rights and who is gaining under the new law. I know I agree with the second interpretation he puts forth, ie that copyright owners lose at least some control of their works by publishing them for the public. This just makes sense to me logically; granting someone control of other people's use of products smacks of authoritarianism to me. But I do agree that making law in this realm is simply a matter of deciding where we, as a society, decide to draw the lines.
The internet connection initiates at the phone jack for all but 3.7 million cable users which means the law and the rules of useage are governed by the phone system.... The best metaphor for port scanning using phone system terminology seeing it starts at the phone system is.... port scanning is equivalent to dialing a phone number to see if anyone is there, or if it is an active connection... and this is very similiar to telemarketing... In the state of Florida there is no law that says I cant have an autodialer dial all phone number to see if a human answers,modem or fax answers. I would be scanning phone ports. Not illegal and no ones property is trespassed. Connecting to a machine via the internet and I go further and connect to port, this is no different than walking into a open store. However IF I change or modify any function of the machines operation then I have stepped onto someones property and the rules change. And in Florida we do have a law... called computer tampering a 3rd degree felony. I can look anywhere the access is not blocked as long as I dont modify anything. But back to the phone system analogy... yes I can dial any phone number and all of them if I wish ... but I cant do it repeatedly to the same number without running amiss of the law.
ANY comparison to property laws fail... because anyone can walk on your property and not break the law (watch out in Texas though) if the property does not have a POSTED sign... We dont have a very good equivalent on the internet.
The GA State Supreme Court does not see anything wrong with it...
SEE
Taxes and Lazy People are best friends.
But the ports are open and vulnerable, so we must plug them.
But we don't know what ports are open, so we must scan them.
--
Shaft of light
Yeah, if it's on your network, you own the machine. No problem there. Think a little before you post. And by the way, if attornies have the IQs of slugs, I would certainly hate to see what you have, after reading that second paragraph.
If there was a "-1 Not Funny", that'd be my most used mod.
About 1 in 4 times the scan can get gets tracked to an actual subscriber, or the sysadmin of the compromised system can track them down. The attacker then gets their internet service disconnected. It also gives you plenty of material to provide law enforcement.
As a network administrator for a large ISP, I deal with about 4 or 5 major scans in a 24 hour period. On weekends, it can be twice that. The time it takes to track down the IPs mainly with ARIN or APNIC (75% of all scans come from .kr) and cross reference firewall scans with server logs and then e-mail the sysadmins adds up.
It gets old, and little script kiddies who want
to be k-rad ub3r 31337 are the cause. They should not get criminal charges, but their ISPs should
be required to terminate their(or more likely, mommy and daddy's account).
-DankNinja
@hha.net
P.S. I've had a few beers, sorry for run-on sentences and spellng erors.
Port scans aren't exactly "knocking on doors." It's more like sticking your head in the door and trying to see if there's a conversation. You knock on someone's door with a ping. What's more, port scans are often looking for a particular conversation that they can make use of.
- Sig this!
Hearing is more passive than sight. Sight is directional and you must direct your line of sight to your subject. Computers can certainly hear, and this is a much closer analogy. The problem here is that the port scanners are picking a computer and screaming in all its 'ears' just to see if anyone's listening.
Perhaps the protocol needs to be revised to be something more polite, where such screaming is limited to a polite request.
- Sig this!
One word: HUNTING!. Since you seem unfamiliar with the word, let me explain. You pay money to the government (usually the state, which uses it for conservation), get a permit, take the big bad evil gun (a rifle or shotgun in most cases, but sometimes a handgun is used), and shoot some non-human creature (whatever the permit says you can shoot). Then you take your kill home and eat it, if its something big, like a deer, you have meat for awhile.
Sure, it may seem cruel, but I've seen wild animals, and I know how most domesticated livestock is raised, and the agribusiness farms are the cruel part.
Oh, and I don't hunt. I occasionally speak out against the current system of hunting, since I believe the state DNR prefers to keep deer numbers artificially high in order to get more revenue. However, your argument is flawed, and I must point it out. There are plenty of legitimate arguments for gun control, but "guns are evil" is not one of them.
both a bike and a car are a means of transport so using a phone and the internet must also be the same and, more important, the same rules should apply to both examples.
---
Privacy is terrorism.
Well we're all glad that's sorted out. All someone has to do is modify nmap so it sends a protocol-correct packet after each connect() and it's no longer a port scanner?
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Of course there are. DNS. HTTP with non-keepalive-capable client and/or server.
It can't request it if the protocol doesn't allow for it.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
If that were truly the issue, you could use traps.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
And so? I compared trying doorknobs with trying simple exploits. These are similar because both operations, if successful, actually create a path into the secured area. This is why port scanning is NOT like trying doors. Port scanning just tells you where the doors are, something that can easily be done from the sidewalk.
You go try to have the neighbor kids arrested for stepping off the sidewalk into your grass and let me know how it goes.
What's an "advertised" service? Until (if ever) SRV records are widely deployed, this is meaningless. There is a continuum between plastering your port-80 address on every bus shelter and billboard in town, and telling nobody about the existence of your machine. In between those two points, there's no clear line.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Then you need better glasses.
Your list of metaphorical intrusions and indignities doesn't leave anything to analogize for actual attacks.
You're not going to be able to map the full cycle of casing, analysis, attack, and penetration to the burglary story unless you pace yourself a little.
Remember perspective, it's a wonderful thing.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
It's surely a good news to me. Everyday I got hundreds netbios (137/138/139) port scannings on my Linux server from Windows boxes within the same domain. I always wish somebody would bash them and jail them.
Yes those Windows users might not aware as the netbios port scanning is being done automatically. However, they must take responsible for booting up their netbios port scanning OS which annoy their honest Linux neighbours.
"Say you are a sysadmin. You run a mission-critical webserver. In the status quo, you receive around 40 portscans a minute. Hackers have been successful 3 times on your site. If portscans are outlawed, then the overall security of your site receives additional protection.
Practical benefits like this one should be MUCH more important than simply protecting 'liberty."
Please don't take this as a flame, but this is the same kind of flawed thinking that leads to things like anti-gun laws.
It is an extremely FALSE assumption that merly outlawing portscans will somehow reduce breaking into systems, DOS attacks, etc. Last time I checked, THOSE activities were already illegal.
To have any HOPE of effectiveness, you'd have to outlaw portscanning utilities. And give that law enough teeth to allow the stormtroopers (police) the ability to "find out who has them".
Portscanners have very PRACTICAL and good purposes you know, such as, me, as a sysadmin can use one to make sure the ports I wanted closed ARE closed... To ban portscans and portscanning means more systems will be left open and vulnerable!
Please think about the implications before so quickly giving up a liberty for the (false) promise of government guaranteed safety.
Here is the best quote on this subject:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.
=== The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Well, many programs do types of 'port scans' to look for certain services to connect to. For example, Gnutella clients routinly scan several class C networks looking for other nodes within the same netblock (as these should be closer to localhost). In fact, I think the portscan is a very useful method in IP. Unfortunatly, it's misused, and as a result often is abused.
A good metaphor for port scanning would be going up and knocking on every door in the neighborhood to see if people are home. There is nothing illegal about that. It may irritate people if you go do it every 5 minutes, or do it during dinner (prime time), but it isn't illegal at all. If you're offering a service, then you are offering it. It's visible. If you don't have it secured, then that's your own fault -- anyone who can be broken into using a simple nmap and a vist to the local script kiddie exploit page doesn't have security at all, and is just using the pathetic execuse of a portscan as an attack, in which case, unfortunatly, it actually is.
It doesn't matter anyway if we make portscans 'illegal', because they will still be done. DoS is technically illegal, but people still do it. All that article was to be was annoying lawyer rhetoric and unsubstatinated arguments.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Then there are the "gray" ports, like the non-standard Gnutella ports. Attempting to connect to 6347 after failing to connect to 6346 might be an attempt to ask for permission to speak to a Gnutella client, though it's unlikely.
That still leaves a lot of ports, and attempting to connect to any of them is suspect. If it is only once though, then we're still in the "gray" area. However, attempting to connect to hundreds of ports sequentially, even as slow as once a minute, puts us firmly in the "black" area.
Ok, now let me go back to your questions:
Does a program have to used? If I send 50 http GET requests to a computer within one second, is that port scanning? What about 50 TCP requests to a computer to 50 different ports in one second?How many TCP ports need to be probed in how much time to be defined as port scanning?
If this guy is serving in any sort of administrative capacity, I feel sorry for his coworkers, because he's obviously a great sucking void of technical knowledge, but he thinks he knows it all. May God have mercy on his users.
I think you're missing the point. Most of the computers connected to the internet are private property. That is, someone owns them. In this case, my analogy still holds. The only machines on the internet which are 'public facilies' would be perhaps government websites (i.e., paid for by tax dollars and are 'public property' in the sense that parks and roads are). Still, you don't go around jiggling doorknobs on public libraries and government buildings, do you? Remember the internet may seem like a public place, but its infrastructure and the machines connected to it aren't public goods. I can still provide public 'access' to my house (by having a yard sale, or new years' party, etc) and call it private property.
I'm pretty sure it's illegal to go from house to house testing people's doorknobs and windows, even if you claim that you're not up to anything bad. Why should portscanning (or even automated portscanning of larger netblocks) be any different?
Generally the first thing I do after I finish setting up and configuring a box that I believe to be secure is run nmap on it with an order to scan everything. If nmap shows anything that I didn't explicitly decide to allow, that means I wrote the firewall rules wrong and need to do it again. The thing is even if the US outlaws portscanners the script kiddiez will keep using them. They are already looking to break the law (by breaking in to a computer). This not to mention script kiddiez in other countries where it is legal. So then what do sysadmins do? If we aren't allowed to legally scan our own computers we could be leaving holes open that we don't know about.
erm... whoever moderated this as troll is obviously an idiot. and mikethegeek too. i qoute him:
"....the same kind of flawed thinking that leads to things like anti-gun laws"
guns kill people. the more guns there are, the more people get shot.
whether portscanners increase or decrease security is a different matter altogother. its not a life or death situation, just a financial one.
dont confuse money with life.
!i feel strongly enough about this to post non-anonymously, despite the off-topic/troll factor!
all you pro-gun fanatics are obviously missing the point:
what i am sying is that you cannot compare a gun with a portscanner. duh. like, sure you can kill someone with a screwdriver. or a gun or a teaspoon. but a portscanner??
what i am saying is (and _listen_ this time): GUN LAW Vs PORSCANNER LAW IS NOT A FAIR COMPARISON
i aint anti-guns.... but if you say they dont kill poeple yau are an idiot. they are designed with one purpose in mind. which means the screwdriver/knife/teaspoon/coliander argument really doesnt hold water.
if you were real men, you wouldnt mind risking a few karma
Would you have no problem with someone doing all that? That's a port scan.
No, that is not at all like a port scan. Doing things like "Trying all 256 codes on RF X-10 modules, using a frequency counter/scanner to check for and listen in on radio transmissions" seems more like the meatspace version of a vulnerability scan (i.e. nessus).
In a similar vein:
Many people compare portscanning to "checking all the doors and windows to see if they are locked" That is hogwash. Portscanning (e.g. nmap) is like looking to see what doors and windows are on the building. Banner capture is like looking closely at the window and door locks to see what kind of lock they are. (e.g. bindview's HackerShield[1]). You are not actually doing something equivalent to checking if the doors are locked until you try using the vulnerabillity (e.g. nessus[2])
[1] Last year I used HackerShield to check one of my OpenBSD boxes. It reported that the box was vulnerable to the ancient sendmail "wiz" vulnerability. The reason it made that erroneous report was that I was running an old version of sendmail that the OpenBSD team has patched and audited to make secure, but HackerShield only checks the sendmail banner that is displayed when you telnet to port 25. It saw the old banner, and reported it as vulnerable.
[2] One of the nessus tests for cold fusion looks for vulnerable scripts (ones that are installed by default by cold fusion) by trying to use the script to remotely download your win.ini files. That clearly is like the meatspace act of trying to open a door in order to see if it is locked.
--
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Musashi
"Weapons should be hardy rather than decorative" - Miyamoto Musashi
I think that goes for OS's too
This is not as simple as it sounds. Anyone who knows how to program using sockets knows that it's very, very, very easy to do a portscan program. It's one of my firsts sockets tests.
So, if there are newbies and clueless that can easyly create a portscan program, how can we consider guilty, and judge them, while experienced and ill-intencioned programers use zombies-like computers?
Then we will reach the same old discussion about guns. Considering innocents guilty, and ill-intencioned indivudues innocent!
There's also another point. What can be considered portscaning? If I verify randomly 100 ports a day, I can portscan a server in 10 days, and than do whatever I want to.
There's a lot to discuss before put this in pratice. But, that's why we are here, isn't it?
Don't worry. I'm too contundent [to|every]day
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
It's just like knocking on a door, trying a door handle, or checking if a window can be opened (former like port 80 or 21, latter like port 31337 ). If you do it at one house on one door then, you're probably just trying to visit a friend. If you check all the doors, the neighbours will eye you and try and figure out who you are. If you rattle the windows at 3am up and down the block while carrying a "break in kit", we'll have the police put you in jail on numerous charges.
Yes and that's is why is high school chemistry labs we should allow children access to dangerous chemicals without supervision.
Thanks for bringing back some good memories; I had no chemistry experience but had a cool chemistry cookbook; they gave me permission and free reign to prepare for a chemistry demo until people started getting nervous about the smoke filling the halls;
I think the issue is how different people view their computer. For a lot of people, especially those of us on the net before '95 or so, a computer was kinda like a tree house, you don't really care if anyone comes in, 'cause "we're all friends" or something like that. But since, not only are people likely to be destructive, as opposed to just looking around, or using it benignly; as well businesses are putting themselves on the net. Yes I agree that port scanning is a relatively intrusive look at a machine, and doing the equivalent, if not against the law (I'm unsure), would certainly not be decent. If you came home and saw someone trying to peep in your windows because your drapes were only 99% closed, would you chuckle as say "Gee, I'll be certain they're closed next time, thanks for pointing this out" or would you be pissed off? Most people would be pissed off. But a lot of the slashdot readers are probably a combo of people whose computer is a tree-house, and of those who have well-secured their house, such that while they might not like someone pushing the edge of acceptability, they know they have little to worry about.
Gone is the day that I could offer anonymous ftp with uploading... gone are the days when one can run an open mailer... and gone are the days where a port scan is perfectly acceptable. However, I'm not sure most makes it gone, the fact that there are random destructive people around, or that there are so many "common" people and businesses around. Either way, it sucks, IMHO.
information ripping software can be considered illegal and the information used via Gnutella or other peer to peer networks can not be used by anyone either. Under the definition as "poking around", this would easily fit in this catagory. Hence the MPAA and RIAA will lose big time in the courts should port scanning become illegal.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
Dude, he was being sarcastic.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.
Many will condemn the thoughts put forth in the law journal as contradictory to the natural rights of liberty on the internet. In other words, all the 'slashbot' is trying to protect is some vague idealogical conception about how the internet should function.
This view of regulations on the internet is fundamentally WRONG. Idealogical concerns can only be catered to AFTER considering practicality! I feel that the law journal makes very correct insights regarding legislation on the internet. The law journal correctly puts practicality before ideology.
Say you are a sysadmin. You run a mission-critical webserver. In the status quo, you receive around 40 portscans a minute. Hackers have been successful 3 times on your site. If portscans are outlawed, then the overall security of your site receives additional protection.
Practical benefits like this one should be MUCH more important than simply protecting 'liberty.'
Once you get a-thinking like that, you're going down a slippery slope to an increasingly fugitive mentality.
...And don't think that no one has ever been arrested for "stealing a 5 cent bazooka gum from your neighborhood grocery store's bulk candy section".
If port scanning is a right (a question I'll leave to others to address), then it must be protected, as all rights must be protected. If you allow it to be made illegal, rationalizing that it'll usually be overlooked by law enforcement anyway, you're putting yourself at the mercy of chance, making yourself a fugitive, rather than standing on solid ground and claiming what's justly yours.
...also, I failed to mention that portscanning should not be treated the same way as stealing from a store, because it is not the same at all. It is perhaps equivalent to looking around the store to see if there are any surveillance devices. As far as I know, looking around when you are in a store is perfectly legal. There are no security guards in every aisle saying "nothing to see here, move along."
Unfortunately the former happens much more than the latter, and even if it didn't, law mixes the two definitions together. (Although, as a side note, I always wondered if white-hat hackers try to break into their neighbors apartments for their "safety". :) )
By the way, I would think scanning ports that have nothing to do with web, ftp, telnet, etc. should be considered illegal (unless its your own box).
Just wondering, what constitutes port scanning? How many TCP ports need to be probed in how much time to be defined as port scanning? Does a program have to used? If I send 50 http GET requests to a computer within one second, is that port scanning? What about 50 TCP requests to a computer to 50 different ports in one second? I want to know!
D/\ Gooberguy
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
If you can't transmit packets thru a port how isWindows going to operate. slashdot should refrain from repeating things said by attornies as;they usually have the IQs of slugs & are more intent on being irritating & to make money. If someone opens his port on my network I dammed well reserve the right to scan what its doin' there.
Good by good friend, if J. edgar was around you wouldn't have had to uphold your oath to defend... against those who defile the Word, both foreign & domestic. Its a shame you had to get caught in the rain. You wouldn't have to go if our leaders knew how to lead, but men of such low degree can't even forgive themselves, they've been in Hell so long they can't ever look up. Men of good will know that you certainly never expected proper treatment, so you never got your day.
J. Edgar says Aloha
Gun control doesn't involve "out-lawing" guns. It just places social limitations on their trafficing.
Just something to remember about Law Review articles. Not all are created equal. I used to edit 'em...some are great...others...aren't. First, the Fences in Cyberspace piece isn't an article, actually, it's a student note...there's a big difference. An article is written by a professor or practicioner. A note is written by a law student. Not that profs or lawyers are always right and students wrong...but there's an analytical and experiential factor to consider. Second, remember that the note makes a proposal and argues a point, rather than being indicative of what the law actually says, or how a court might interpret it. This isn't a negative comment about Finding Fences, but rather an overlay that may be helpful in considering what you're reading...
Yeah, I'm a New York Lawyer. That's the good news, and the bad news.
Port Scanning - Illegal
Cat Scanning - Not Illegal
I think we've got that nailed down now.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I find an interesting similarity between law and shared source. They're both big crufty kluges that don't work very well, are full of bugs, and are hard to fix. Changes are often made for political reasons and have little practical merit. And you can't fix it yourself; you can only ask the vendor to fix it and hope they'll get around to it sooner or later.
I am glad that the public has shown such an interest in my case. It is all about what the future holds for the rights of computer people everywhere. If they outlaw port scanning, what is next? Outlaw Pinging? They tried to say that in this case also. I wish I could talk more about it, but as there is a Criminal prosecution case pending and I am forbidden to disclose material that is not already public. All depositions in the FEDERAL case, including the depositions of two Georgia Bureau of Investigation detectives are public, if you can figure out how to get them. Computer specialist should really read the depositions of the GBI Computer guys and see what kind of experience they have and how they investigate a case as well as what they believe constitutes a crime. It may be helpful in the future to know how to defend yourselves You can also see another report by Kevin Poulsen at: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/126 Kevin called me, but again I could not disclose information on this case even though I would have enjoyed speaking with him. I am proud that I could be of some benefit to the computer society in defending and protecting the rights of specialists in the computer field, however it is EXTREMELY costly to support such an effort, of which I am not happy about. But I will continue to fight and prove that there is nothing illegal about port scanning especially when I was just doing my job. Thanks goes out those who have sent messages of support in the past year that my company and I have been dragged through this mess. Thanks again, Scott Moulton