Surveying Port Scans and Their Detection Methodologies

Scanning of ports on a computer occurs frequently on the Internet. An attacker performs port scans of IP addresses to find vulnerable hosts to compromise. However, it is also useful for system administrators and other network defenders to detect port scans as possible preliminaries to more serious attacks. It is a very difficult task to recognize instances of malicious port scanning. In general, a port scan may be an instance of a scan by attackers or an instance of a scan by network defenders. In this survey, we present research and development trends in this area. Our presentation includes a discussion of common port scan attacks. We provide a comparison of port scan methods based on type, mode of detection, mechanism used for detection, and other characteristics. This survey also reports on the available datasets and evaluation criteria for port scan detection approaches.