An online port scanner can help you discover a good number of holes that can be used by a hacker to cause mayhem against you. Keep reading if you want to know more about how an online port scanner works.
It is important to note that the security of your network is being put to the test particularly if your network is somehow connected to the internet.
Hackers are always on the lookout for how to access and steal or cause damage to your resources. These hackers are always probing your internet-facing servicers, so in order not to allow hackers gain easy access, it’s important to leave no holes unplugged.
Online port scanner as an application:
An online port scanner functions as an application typically designed to probe a host or server for open ports. In a bid to identify vulnerable network services running on a server, attackers can use this scanner to exploit them.
However, this type of scanner is mostly employed by admins to verify security policies on their networks.
Interestingly, online port scanners are designed to be less obtrusive. Although they tend to probe your services and servers through their scanning activities, it’s good to know that they are not meant to cause any harm or put your services offline.
During the web or network security scan, there is always a minimal impact on the performance of the server.
Online port scanner uses raw packets:
An online port scanner uses raw IP packets to identify available services running on a host. Additionally, it also tries to check if a server has firewall enabled or find out what OS is running or find out what ports are open etc.
Interestingly, if a server is running a known OS (Operating System) that can be analyzed by the scanner to guess uptime, then it will also be capable of detecting the uptime of the server.
Good enough, you both test the security of any web application running on the server and the security of the server itself with an online port scanner.
It would be a good idea to scan any other services, such as a hosted server at a hosting provider. But before launching any scans on websites hosted on a server, you may need to first of all check with your hosting provider.
Apart from identifying vulnerabilities on a host, an online port scanner is capable of reporting on the exposed information. Although it is possible to resolve an identified vulnerability, however, this depends on the level of vulnerability identified during the network scan.
In some cases, you may just be required to run an upgrade on the system to the recent version of the OS or the scanner being used.
But in other cases, you may just need to impute the correct configuration of the program.