clarification, please

Reading the thread about someone being scanned it came about that it might not be legal??? I understood that it was okay to run a scanner, and have just to see them work, and ping people who hit your firewalls, etc. as long as you don't enter.
Someone posted a reply that scanning was comparable to standing outside someones houseand deciding how you were going to break in-I thought it was comparable to walking down the street and looking at all the different houses.
Can I legally bombard someone who scans me repeatedley, or would I be out of line-I wouldn't be comforatable calling an isp because of a breach on my home computer(correction-attempted breach) Obviously I am about to be set straight and that is what i am looking for. Too many of the things I have read never explain the legalities of different actions, so I appreciate all your feedback

you are correct in your assumption. There are currently no laws stating that you cant do port scans on persons computers.

Quote:

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Port scanning is an ideological ambiguity within the computer industry. While usually considered malicious, port scanning is often used by system administrators to diagnose problems on their own network. While most private organizations prohibit the activity, there are currently no state or federal laws that specifically address it.

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the full story can be found here

Hope this helps

if you attack someones computer your guilty of attacking someones computer period.

with most ISPs scanning of the computers of others is against the user agreement. if you report them they can loose their account. if you "blast" them (whatever you mean by that) you are guilty of whatever it is you do. if by blast you mean attack them then you've broken the law while they may or may not have only broken a user agreement with their isp.

by "blast" I mean continually (5minutes) scan and ping them so they know I am paying attention-which until now thought was what I was supposed to do

Thanks Spyrus-I'll send my scanner off my desktop into my old toys folder- I am here to learn, not to burn

if you do that they can claim your attempting to proform a denial of service attack.

let me ask you this, are they doing an all ports scan and have you done a whois on the ip address?

well this sort of behaviour will definately get you flagged. legal or not, some companies may think it in their best interests to keep an eye on you, especially if you are contineously scanning ip ranges and trying to connect to any ftp or telnet service etc. that you find.

I only do it when my firewall alerts say I am being scanned-before I started doing whosis I used to scan my isp!!! It is hard getting good solid info on a lot of this stuff and that is why I returned to college this semester-To learn in a structured manner instead of jumping around radomly though this site has helped me an awful lot

you can try sending them a message using net send. if they don't have a firewall and they have messanger service running it would really freak them out. net send messaging is considered to fall under the catogory of instant messaging which is how come spammers are getting away with it.

just:

NET SEND xx.xxx.xxx.xx leave me the hell alone

you'll get a message say it was successfull or not. just make sure its not a ligit scan first. im not sure what your calling a scan.

does it give you the ip address and all the ports its scanning?

it gives the ports and the ip- I don't know "net send"

open a dos prompt and type the example i gave you putting in the ip addy in place of the Xs.

there can be many ligitamite scans made. what ports are the hitting you don't want to jump to conclusions

Tedob- Thanks for your patience! I have learned alot from you and the other good people like you at this site- I gotta go walk the dog and do my homework (c++) Life is good and the more I don't know the more I am able to learn-Thanks again!!!!!!!!!!

Hi,

Sorry for entering the conversation but i'd like to give you an advice. If i'd contact my ISP every time someone scans me i would have contacted my ISP 3 consecutive years the 365 days of every year, so 1095 consecutive days!!! Wow, that's a lot What i'm trying to say is that be completely sure that someone is scanning you with "bad" intentions and aren't just Internet companies that are doing its "work" (hehe!!!). Besides, [and believe me because my brother works in my country's best ISP (well, the only one here)] if you bother the ISP employees too much with false scans they will get angry and will remember your account and can slow down your bandwith, etc., for being so molest (just think they're normal persons like you and me that have to respond to a lot of requests during the day and get tired and angry if you bother them for "small" problems). They could go against you and their bosses will never know about it, so take care!!! My brother had told me a looooot of stories of ISP employees tricking with bothering customers.

Well, just trying to help with my opinion, good luck!!!

DKRR

Now my 2cents ;)

These could be scans from other people, but you also have to remember that there are TONS of worms out there that do the same thing. They scan you to see what is open, and if a certain port(s) is open, will attack with their prewritten script/intent. I'm sure they play a role in your firewall alerts. Though the role may be minimal.

If you have a firewall in place and up2date OS/antivirus and firewall patches, then you should be ok. If you are broadband and it is possible... i would recommend renewing your IP address frequently, unless you are running a server or something. Some broadband ISPs do that for you, and some don't let you if you are static.