RE: [dvd-discuss] e: portscanning

[Noah silva <nsilva(at)atari-source.com>]

> law. BTW- Earthlink's policy is that using "ping" is a violation of the 
> service agreement.

lol... and how are you supposed to check for basic connectivity in case of
a problem?

Honestly, I use NMAP (and other scanners) all the time, it has a lot of
purposes besides planning a break-in.  It's good to know who your
neighbors are.  

f.e.: If I see I have 35 other windows hosts on my subnet, I
might think about hardening my windows machines a little more against
abuse.

mainly though, I use NMAP against only my own machines to make sure there
aren't any surprises.  Sometimes it is usefull against machines I have
permission to access, f.e. my university server, it helps to see wether a
problem is on my end or not if I can see "oh I see the portmapper isn't
running", etc.

to me, offering internet service but saying:
"oh yeah, outgoing access to ports 25, 13, and 46 is blocked, incoming
access to ports 80 and 24 are blocked, and we don't support telnet or
ping."

is akin to saying:
"ok your new phone lines are hooked up, and you can dial all local
numbers, except for those in exchange 610 or 437, and people in exchange
213 can't call you.  We don't support FAX or caller ID, but they might
work."

  -- noah silva