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Understanding Port Scans and Ping Sweeps

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Understanding port scans and ping sweeps
You tried to log in on your work computer only to realize that either your system doesn’t accept your passwords or some valuable files are missing on the hard drive. If you have ever been hacked, this scenario sounds familiar to you. Today, more and more businesses utilize the internet to do business. Needless to say, the computer use popularity has been steadily increasing over recent years. At the same time, the security has become one of the major concerns in any company since there are a lot of techniques used by hackers to gain control of a PC system or a network. Furthermore, understanding of network computer activities such as port scans and ping sweeps not only helps to prevent any unauthorized accessed to the company system, but also helps to reduce the chance of being hacked.
Generally speaking, ping sweep is a technique of sending multiple ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) packets to a target network by an attacker to identify any possible alive IP addresses on a particular network. An attacker is usually using an automated ping sweep tools such as fping and nmap to determine which IP addresses don’t have any network block on them (Preetham, 2002). In other words, by using ping sweep the attacker can not only to obtain an active IP address but also initiate a possible attack on that IP address and gain access to the valuable information. Needless to say that an IT administrator needs to be able to detect pings sweeps before the attacker can get any access to the company`s network.
In addition to ping sweep, another technique such as port scan can be used by the attacker to determine open ports and running services on a targeted computer system. In fact, by scanning open ports, a hacker gets enough knowledge of the targeted system such as what operation system is installed and what applications or services

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