Mac Mgrs Mtg-2003.11.19-Nmap

Monitoring Lab Computers With Nmap by James Reynolds What do you get when you mix fast computers, large hard disks, lots of RAM, fast internet connections, a UNIX OS, public access to the CPU, and no monitoring? A really nice public computer lab. However, add one really smart cracker, and soon you have a really nice public lab of unauthorized internet servers. While Mac OS X is secure, it isn't impenetrable, and it is gold mine. Someday, across University campuses everywhere, really smart crackers are going to realize that cracking into convenience store safes aren't as profitable as cracking into bank vaults. When they finally realize this, it would be nice if lab admins already have security systems ready to stop them. NMap is a tool that scans a computer's network ports. Make sure that your computers don't have network ports open that shouldn't be open by using a script and cron to automate nmap scans. James will discuss and demonstrate automating nmap in our labs.