[ntp:questions] ntp survey

Richard B. Gilbert rgilbert88 at comcast.net
Tue Dec 30 23:58:09 UTC 2008


Unruh wrote:
> Tim Shoppa <shoppa at trailing-edge.com> writes:
> 
>> On Dec 30, 12:32=A0pm, Unruh <unruh-s... at physics.ubc.ca> wrote:
>>> "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Tim Shoppa wrote:
>>>>> On Dec 29, 10:47 pm, ma... at ntp.isc.org (Danny Mayer) wrote:
>>>>>> Antonio,
>>>>>> If you are really from nic.br please use your email address from that
>>>>>> domain. It is unacceptable to use a gmail account for such notificati=
>> ons.
>>>>>> Danny
>>>>> This is usenet, where anyone can set their "from" address to anything
>>>>> they want, and posting with an E-mail address that is adequately spam-
>>>>> filtered makes perfect sense.
>>>>> I'm not sure there's any real requirement that anyone has to announce
>>>>> any particular e-mail address to run a NTP survey. He made the
>>>>> methodology clear, said where the queries will be coming from, and I
>>>>> think it's good that surveys continue and, like Antonio and his
>>>>> collaborators do, they make the details and results public.
>>>>> Tim.
>>>> There is no requirement that he even announce his survey! =A0It is polit=
>> e
>>>> for him to do so but no more than that.
>>> Well, Under various laws he may be guilty of hacking/cracking/illegal use
>>> fo computer time/... unless he gets permission. There has at least been a
>>> strong feeling by many expressed that access does not imply permission. I=
>> e,
>>> just because the ntp port is open does not mean that anyone has permissio=
>> n
>>> to use that port (eg is port scanning legal?). It is of course a complete=
>> legal can of worms.
>>> But announcing the survey here might be useable as a partial defense =A0i=
>> f
>>> the worms wriggled out of the can.
> 
>> Bill -
>>  NTP surveys are good things. NTP Surveys that publish their results
>> are even better. A NTP client is a server. Port scanning is bad.
> 
> I do not dispute that and I suspect that any court would take that position
> as well. I am hypothesising that one of the reasons they announced the
> survey was as one more brick in a possible defence against some prosecutor
> in some jurisdiction accussing them of hacking.
> 
> There have been interminable arguments as to whether or not port scanning
> should be criminalised. That would almost certainly extend to this kind of
> survey. I think it would be a very bad idea to criminalise port scanning,
> but many people think otherwise. 
> 

Port scanning, very occasionally, has legitimate purposes.  I once used 
a port scanning program to find out what port(s) a copier/printer used. 
  It did not use the standard port that I expected but the port scan 
told me what I wanted to know.

Now port scanning something that is not yours, if not criminal, is 
certainly extremely bad manners and suggests that you have nefarious 
intentions.  It  goes on all the time!  I have a router/firewall that 
blocks all incoming traffic unless the connection was initiated from 
inside the firewall.  I occasional look at the logs just for grins.
Somebody is banging on that box every ten seconds or so, twenty-four and 
  seven!  Not all the people banging on that box are running port scans, 
of course, most of them seem to be trying ports 1028 and 1029; I think 
they may have something to do with instant messaging.

My external address is assigned by DHCP and has changed many times over 
the years.  I have no idea what it is at the moment and don't really 
care.  It enables the machines I want to talk to to reply to me.  If I 
really wanted to get into my network from outside, I could configure the 
router to allow it but I have never done so and doubt that I ever will!




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