Rapid7 Scans Internet for Open and Vulnerable Ports

Security Company Rapid7 during the period April-end to May-beginning conducted one scan of the entire IPv4 Internet with the aid of a tool called Project Sonar. The scan covered all IP addresses that were for public use and the purpose was to analyze the services getting provided on the extended Internet.

Rapid7 compiled certain "heat map," as the company named it, of the Net, searching those servers whose ports were exposed and prone to compromise. It found that such ports were the maximum in Belgium Internet, after which Tajikistan and Samoa followed.

The findings by Rapid7 provides the explanation as to why numerous botnets currently choose SOHO routers and IoT devices more in comparison with contaminated desktop computers. With this attackers can more easily forcibly break into a Telnet port that's exposed compared to tactful malware for Windows that evade anti-viruses, and templates of spear-phishing electronic mails that are subject to A/B tests.

Numerous ports obtainable from say a server provide the services expected of them; the commonest instance -port 80 that offers usual Web-pages, or http services. Better still, in case https the encrypted edition gets provided. Itwire.com posted this, June 9, 2016.

However, several services exist that aren't encrypted while are prone to compromise, like port 110 which facilitates the provision of POP3 servers. Similarly, port 21 offers FTP services, a fully insecure way of transmitting data-files online.

Rapid7's study notes that in the present time, the Internet affects literally everybody's lives while critically serves economic security. Conversely, even by adopting wholly encrypted protocols facilitating key online services, there hasn't been suitable scaling with people's global, national and personal reliance over the Net.

The open Telnet ports discovered on the Internet were not, however, the sole ones that are questionable. For, Rapid7's report too delineates more than 20.3m exposed FTP ports, more than 8.8m Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) ports, more than 7.8m MySQL ports, more than 5.2m RFB ports, and more than 3.3m MSSQL ports.

While one definitely wouldn't come across Telnet that is active on sophisticated routers of Cisco, IoT devices having this protocol is highly commonplace.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/15/2016