port-scanning, in and of itself, is not illegal per se.
however, repeated portscans to devices or ip addys could be construed as suspicious behavior and a complaint can be brought against you by any of the involved parties. depending on who your isp is & the usage terms agreement you signed and how willing they are to enforce good conduct, they might or might not 'come after' you.
While port scanning is a useful reconnaissance technique used by crackers to locate vulnerabilities in systems that are running services on certain computer ports, it is essentially a passive query that works within the architecture of TCP/IP. Without the ability to query remote computer ports to determine the service that is running and its compatibility with other computers, the Internet would cease to function. Many argue that port scanning and other tools like network analyzers, packet sniffers etc. normally used for analyzing networks and their vulnerabilities are used for malicious purposes having the element of criminal intent. Thus, the use of these should be made illegal, even if the use was innocent and did not cause any real damage.
However, only when a cracker uses this tool to commit a crime, then such port scanning should be illegal. But as with the "House Breaking" law, the criminal intent of the person is what turns a good tool bad. But since people can't read minds, intent is usually proven by the criminal act itself. Since there are legitimate uses for port scanning, it is impossible to determine the intent of the scanner unless he goes on to penetrate the system, which is a criminal act already u/s 66 of the Information Technology Act.
I am portscanning an IP address because that person is trying to log into my firewall server. That person has tried several times to log in as administrator. I caught their IP address using ethereal and i have the information of their ISP.
i am now putting together evidence to be emailed to the ISP. I have also blocked that particular IP address.
Linear Mode
