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Port Scanning
What is Port Scanning Port Scanning is one of the most popular reconnaissance techniques attackers use to discover services they can break into. All internet connected machines run many services that listen on ports. A port scan helps the attacker find which ports are available, consisting of sending a message to each port one at a time. The kind of response received indicates whether the port is used and thus can be probed further for weaknesses to be exploited.
How the University Helps In order to better protect the network and its users, CITES Security takes an active role to find these weakness before they become a problem. CITES reserves the right to perform targeted scans of your connection for specific vulnerabilities to maintain the network and prevent outages. Your privacy is not at risk during these scans and no personal information is viewed or recorded. Most likely your connection will not be port scanned and if it is you will not notice a disruption of service. But if a particularly dangerous vulnerability is found your connections may be temporarily disabled and a NetTech will need to help you.
What You Can Do To avoid any port scanning issues you must take an active role. Housing provides many tutorials relevant to this issue that can be found under the Staying Connected headline at housing.uiuc.edu/technology/URHnet/. In particular, follow the instructions for Windows Update and Turn on a Firewall.
Some information on this page can be referenced at auditmypc.com |
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