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Do people get their VPS/Dedi terminated for port scanning?
I am writing a script which monitors ports of VPSes I own, and reports it. As part of debugging it, I have to run checks against ports multiple times a minute. Is this considered malicious activity? The target VPSes are my own, and I'm running the checks from my dedicated at online.net.
I seem to remember that "port scanning" is shunned by the AUPs. Should I be concerned?
Comments
As long as you aren't scanning ranges and getting abuse reports, you're probably fine.
Ask online.net, and the VPS providers, just to be sure.
Do you run multiple checks against just a few ports, or against the whole port range (1-65535)?
if it's just a few ports - then they wouldn't know about it, a netflow analyzer wouldn't catch this. And since you are only scanning your own boxes, they wouldn't receive any complaint either so you should be relatively safe.
I just check
21,22,23,25,80,110,220,443,993,995Well, 23 could trigger some flags (nobody sane uses telnet anymore these days), but if it's only against several IPs and not whole IP ranges i'd say it's safe.
It's just against one IP in each provider. I'll remove 23 just to be safe. I'm more concerned about online.net, which could be seeing an outbound port scanner?
I don't use port 22 for ssh anymore, and you should also move the ssh to another port right now
I have a portscanner and have never got any abuse reports or warnings over its use.