NETWORKING case study

SEC450 GROUP CASE STUDY

Ping Sweeps and Port Scans
DeVry University
SEC450
April 1, 2021
Professor Cheryl Garvin

Brigida Gentile

A security breach can be a huge hit to any company. It can cause a breach of information and ruin the public’s trust. There are many types of threats we should be aware of. Two specific types of threats that can affect us are ping sweeps and port scans. To protect our company, we should know more about these threats and how we can protect ourselves against them.
One type of threat is a ping sweep. Ping sweeps allow hackers to see what computers are active and being used and can give him an active list of IP addresses on our network. Having access to our IP addresses can give a hacker control of many computers or servers and possibly give him the opportunity to take over our whole network.

During a ping sweep, many requests are sent out causing networks to slow down. If this happens to us, it could slow down our production. The more labor needed to finish a task, the more money it can cost our company!
The other type of threat is a port scan. Port scans check for any open ports in a network in which a hacker can use. Open ports allow hackers easier access to steal private information. Port scanning can sometimes be used by security technicians to check for vulnerabilities, but they can also be used by hackers to target victims!

Cyberattacks almost always begin with a port scan attack. When a hacker probes a system with a port scan attack, the ports will respond as open or closed, or it may not respond at all. When ports do not respond at all, it means they are blocked by a firewall.
In addition to the many vulnerabilities, we should be aware of, ping sweeps and port scans are absolutely a danger to our company. “Ping Sweep is a technique used to identify if the hosts are alive in the networks using their IP addresses. The Ping Sweep method is used to ping many hosts at once. For example, if there is a network with network ID 192.10.0.0/24 then it is very simple to identify the total number of hosts there by ping sweeping this network.” (Sivabalan, 2003) We are currently not prepared to handle these attacks.
To protect us, I would like to suggest investing in a firewall. Firewalls disable ICMP packets which blocks requests from a ping sweep. Firewalls also catch port scans by returning no open ports. “The firewall strictly controls which ports are exposed and to whom they are visible, limiting the attack surface discoverable with a port scan. The IPS will detect port scans in progress and shut them down before they are able to gain a full map of your network.” (Chapple, 2020) I believe that investing in a firewall for our company will not only prevent ping sweep and port scan attacks, but it will also give us a piece of mind knowing we are protected.

Mark Marroquin

References
Badrick, C. (2019, January 3). DEFENDING AGAINST PORT SCAN ATTACKS. Retrieved from TURN-KEY TECHNOLOGIES: https://www.turn-keytechnologies.com/blog/article/defending-against-port-scan-attacks/
Chapple, M. (2020). Port scan attack prevention best practices. Retrieved from TechTarget: https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/answer/Port-scan-attack-prevention-best-practices
Sivabalan, V. (2003). Ping Sweeps: Definition, Tools & Uses. Retrieved from Study.com: https://study.com/academy/lesson/ping-sweeps-definition-tools-uses.html