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Re: How to identify a Unix machine....]



Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote (mallet@xxxxxxx):

> Raju Mathur rearranged electrons thusly:
> 
> > Nah, don't bother with running nmap, you may get caught.  Just use
> 
> not all do.  and nmap also lists open ports.
> 

There seems to be a wave of posts recommending/suggesting port scanning
someone else's machine to figure what it is running. None of the posters
seemed to have indicated the dangers involved in port scans.

Port scanning is unethical! Any concerned sysadmin will regard a port scan as
a hacker/cracker trying to identify weakness' in the system (nomatter how
innocent your intentions may be). Most machines may even add you to the
hosts.deny list automagically if it detects a port scan.

Worse still, if you are doing this on your employers machines, be ready to
lose your job.

In general there are several things that a computer system cannot prevent you
from doing - eg. port scanning, packet sniffing, etc - and you might be able
to do these things. This does not mean that you are allowed to do them. And
the more you learn, the more things you can do... and more reasons to remember
this simple rule.

I still have my doubts when someone wants to find out what OS an alien
computer is running. Why would you want to know that??

- Raja

PS: Well, I think I've made this sound too grave, but this is not too bad.