North American Network Operators Group

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RE: Port scanning legal

  • From: Roeland Meyer
  • Date: Tue Dec 19 14:23:14 2000

ping!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Shawn McMahon [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2000 10:58 AM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: Port scanning legal
> 
> 
> On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 11:59:23AM -0500, John Fraizer wrote:
> > 
> > Had he likened portscanning someones network to walking 
> into their back
> > yard with a ladder, climbing up to the second floor and 
> checking for open
> > windows, perhaps the court would have found differently.
> 
> I'm sure they would, but it's a deeply flawed analogy.
> 
> How many ports must be scanned before you deem it an attack?  
> Is one port
> enough?  Five?  50?
> 
> If you pick a number here, is that arbitrary, or do you have a valid
> logical (and legally-supportable) reason for the number?
> 
> If one port is sufficient, then the act of typing an IP address into a
> web browser to see if there's a web server listening is a crime.
> 
>