Managing port scan results with Dr. Portscan
The Doctor Is In
Regularly scanning the ports on your own network prevents intruders from sneaking in, but if you have dozens or hundreds of servers, you'll need professional help: Dr. Portscan to the rescue.
One of the main problems with regular port scans on a large network is the overhead: Depending on the number of servers, the list of open ports can quickly scale to a point that is impossible to track manually. Watching the whole network requires careful, and thus very time consuming, scrutiny of the scan results, and in many cases, you will not have the staff to expend the necessary attention. Additionally, many organizations lack a precisely defined, centrally available target state with which to compare the results, especially if individual departments are allowed to set up their own servers and services.
If you use different scanner locations to analyze your networks (e.g., one location within the organization and one across the Internet), you also face the problem of interpreting different lists of results. Inconsistencies arise because of connections blocked by firewalls and scans occurring at the different times. Reconciling the results requires manual evaluation.
An open source tool known as Dr. Portscan can help you automate distributed port scans and their evaluation. Dr. Portscan is a delta reporting tool that can assist almost any port scanning tool in analyzing parallel or staggered scans of arbitrarily overlapping networks. The results of these scans are automatically aggregated and compared. Changes discovered in the process can be added to reports for various target groups or passed into scripts as parameters. This approach opens up advanced diagnostic options, including the ability to compare the results with a defined target state.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.
-
Two Local Privilege Escalation Flaws Discovered in Linux
Qualys researchers have discovered two local privilege escalation vulnerabilities that allow hackers to gain root privileges on major Linux distributions.
-
New TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro Powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300
The TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen10 offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Danish Ministry of Digital Affairs Transitions to Linux
Another major organization has decided to kick Microsoft Windows and Office to the curb in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.