Managing port scan results with Dr. Portscan
The Doctor Is In
Regularly scanning the ports on your own network prevents intruders from sneaking in, but if you have dozens or hundreds of servers, you'll need professional help: Dr. Portscan to the rescue.
One of the main problems with regular port scans on a large network is the overhead: Depending on the number of servers, the list of open ports can quickly scale to a point that is impossible to track manually. Watching the whole network requires careful, and thus very time consuming, scrutiny of the scan results, and in many cases, you will not have the staff to expend the necessary attention. Additionally, many organizations lack a precisely defined, centrally available target state with which to compare the results, especially if individual departments are allowed to set up their own servers and services.
If you use different scanner locations to analyze your networks (e.g., one location within the organization and one across the Internet), you also face the problem of interpreting different lists of results. Inconsistencies arise because of connections blocked by firewalls and scans occurring at the different times. Reconciling the results requires manual evaluation.
An open source tool known as Dr. Portscan can help you automate distributed port scans and their evaluation. Dr. Portscan is a delta reporting tool that can assist almost any port scanning tool in analyzing parallel or staggered scans of arbitrarily overlapping networks. The results of these scans are automatically aggregated and compared. Changes discovered in the process can be added to reports for various target groups or passed into scripts as parameters. This approach opens up advanced diagnostic options, including the ability to compare the results with a defined target state.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.