RE: Yet another thread on the legality of port scanning

["David Gillett" <gillettdavid () fhda edu>]

> There are legitimate reasons for running a port scan on a 
> computer in a limited fashion, such as service discovery. 

  Portscans don't discover services, just ports.

> > Would a reasonable man conclude that http://www.cnn.com is an 
> > acceptable connection in the absence of explicit 
> permission?  I would
> > say yes, he would.  Would a reasonable man conclude that 
> > ftp://www.cnn.com
> > is an acceptable connection in the absence of explicit permission?
> > I would argue no, he would not.  
>
> I would argue that you're wrong.  Anonymous FTP is a very frequent 
> occurrance on the internet and it's not unreasonable to 
> expect that CNN might have an anonymous FTP site for content.  
> What, exactly, makes you think that it's an unreasonable service 
> to use?

  If CNN wants to provide an anonymous FTP service, they're likely 
to put it on ftp://ftp.cnn.com .  www.cnn.com should almost certainly
be dedicated to web service, and any FTP service running on that box
is *probably* only intended for distribution of content updates to
the web site; if it accepts anonymous connections, that's more likely
by mistake than by design.  "Reasonable man" says that if they have
an intended anonymous FTP site, that's not where it is.

Dave Gillett



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