ETHICAL HACKING NET-185-001N Week 3

This week, I learned more about port scanning and firewalls.

I have used Zenmap, a GUI for Nmap, before, to help identify the IP address assigned to a router that I was using as an access point so I could manage it.  Both can be downloaded from http://nmap.org.  I consulted the appropriate pages from the Nmap manual (https://nmap.org/book/) as well.

Once again, I used http://alternativeto.net (which I rather like) and http://softpedia.com to compare different software products and find out more about them.  I am fairly certain that I'd previous read about XMAS tree scans (scans packets that have the FIN, URG, and Push flags set) when I last researched port scanning for personal use.  I also checked out the http://DistroWatch.com page for Kali Linux (https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kali) for fun.

I researched a bunch of security tools, including the Angry IP scanner (http://www.angryip.org/), Retina Network Security Scanner (https://www.beyondtrust.com/tools/vulnerability-scanner), SoftPerfect Network Scanner (https://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/), Languard by GFI (https://languard.gfi.com) which is good for making sure devices are up to date in terms of patches, and Fing (http://www.fing.io) which I'm sure I've mentioned before, and I do use occasionally, in addition to the aforementioned Nmap and Netmap.  Speaking of firewalls, pfSense (http://pfsense.org) is a decent router and firewall BSD distribution and is both free and open-source (although actually contributing code is a bit more involved than it has to be).  I learned a bit about the port scanner Nikto (the name is a reference to the phrase 'Gort, klaatu barada nikto' from the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, which I recognized immediately), although I hadn't heard of this particular port scanner before somehow.  

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