[Chapter-delegates] Internet Census 2012

[Eric Burger]

Actually, in many countries the answer to the question is that it is legal to shoot the person coming in. In other cultures, it would be rude not to feed them.

In the U.S., this would be very much against many existing, and certainly almost all proposed, laws. That is not a value judgement, just a fact.

This is more of an EFF issue in the U.S. Speaking personally, university researchers do not like the idea of going to jail for benign and useful activity...

On Mar 19, 2013, at 3:34 PM, Joly MacFie <joly at punkcast.com> wrote:

> I think that could be somewhat of an arbitrary call. If a door is open
> is it illegal to walk through? Often the answer is down to the intent,
> which here was benign.
> 
> On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 10:16 AM, Bert Wijnen (IETF)
> <bertietf at bwijnen.net> wrote:
>> So when I read "botnet of 1.3 million hosts" I wonder
>> 
>> Was/is this data collected legally?
>> 
>> Bert Wijnen
>> 
>> 
>> On 3/19/13 10:12 AM, Joly MacFie wrote:
>>> 
>>> [Via Franck Martin]
>>> 
>>> An ad hoc survey using a botnet counts 1.3 billion hosts
>>> 
>>> 
>>> http://internetcensus2012.bitbucket.org/
>>> 
>>> Abstract
>>> While playing around with the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) we
>>> discovered an amazing number of open embedded devices on the Internet.
>>> Many of them are based on Linux and allow login to standard BusyBox
>>> with empty or default credentials. We used these devices to build a
>>> distributed port scanner to scan all IPv4 addresses. These scans
>>> include service probes for the most common ports, ICMP ping, reverse
>>> DNS and SYN scans. We analyzed some of the data to get an estimation
>>> of the IP address usage.
>>> 
>>> All data gathered during our research is released into the public
>>> domain for further study.
>>> 
>>> So, how big is the Internet?
>>> 
>>> That depends on how you count. 420 Million pingable IPs + 36 Million
>>> more that had one or more ports open, making 450 Million that were
>>> definitely in use and reachable from the rest of the Internet. 141
>>> Million IPs were firewalled, so they could count as "in use". Together
>>> this would be 591 Million used IPs. 729 Million more IPs just had
>>> reverse DNS records. If you added those, it would make for a total of
>>> 1.3 Billion used IP addresses. The other 2.3 Billion addresses showed
>>> no sign of usage.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> We hope other researchers will find the data we have collected useful
>>> and that this publication will help raise some awareness that, while
>>> everybody is talking about high class exploits and cyberwar, four
>>> simple stupid default telnet passwords can give you access to hundreds
>>> of thousands of consumer as well as tens of thousands of industrial
>>> devices all over the world.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
>>> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
>>>  http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
>>>  VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
>>> --------------------------------------------------------------
>>> -
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
>>> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
>>> Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
> WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
> http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
> VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> -
> _______________________________________________
> As an Internet Society Chapter Officer you are automatically subscribed
> to this list, which is regularly synchronized with the Internet Society
> Chapter Portal (AMS): https://portal.isoc.org