Re: can/should

[Jose Nazario <jose () biocserver BIOC CWRU Edu>]

On Tue, 23 May 2000, Barry Hudson wrote:

> As a new firewall admin I have a question for the white hats.  I log
> port scans and do a whois to locate the ISP that owns the ip address.  
> My questions is what else can/should be done.  I have no other reason
> to believe they got through or committed any crime.  What else are you
> guys doing?  I hope this is not to far off topic.

we had this conversation last month on INCIDENTS (www.securityfocus.com).
my approach is to note to the domain and site admins that 'hey, soneone is
scanning'. while not a crime, it's often a prelude to a crime and goes
against most AUPs (scanning without concent of the target). it can be a
sign of more insidious activity or a compromised machine, so i say fire
off a note noting the scan. many other felt similarily, and many other
felt that a scan is not a crime and happens so often you should ignore it.

jose nazario                                    jose () biochemistry cwru edu
PGP fingerprint: 89 B0 81 DA 5B FD 7E 00  99 C3 B2 CD 48 A0 07 80
Public key available at http://biocserver.cwru.edu/~jose/pgp-key.asc