Port Scanning Cornerns & General Network Fun

[Gregory]

Hey guys,

First post

Alright, so I'm an experienced port scanner (I love Wireshark), network observer and LAN hacker/modifier -- the white-hat type. I don't do malicious ****. I like messing with WANs and forwarding through them too. I love being able to modify and change settings on the go -- and on different devices (a rooted phone, a regular cell, a Chromebook, and a powerful HP Desktop.

I similarly enjoy networking and the dynamics behind it. (You know, DNS, Subnets, Cascading, PFs and PTs, playing with WANs and LANs and DMZs, gateways, WINS--W7 broadband connections, W7 ipv6 VPNs (and VPNs in general.) And I LOVE Flashing Routers.

So since it follows, I'll ask my second question first: What can I do for fun anyone out there with similar interests...?

I was told recently that when you check ports using your DNS IP ID as a target, excessive open ports are bad...? Are they? Why or why not?

What kinds of programs or shell scripts can i run after uploading to the net for micschevious (sp?) fun? I know there's tons out there!

So someone please -- gimme something to do!!! I'm also getting in to SSH on/via/through my Chromebook with my existing hardware and software set-up. I'm very interested but all that coding sucks. Is it basically an administrative program? And SFTP for secure connections by which important data flows through? What does it mean to set-up one's DNS as the gateway? And vice-versa...is that even possible? What is a DNSmasq? Are Name-Servers the authority from which we obtain nessary "DN information."?


Thanks,
Greg

[Philip]

A lot of stuff in that post

SSH (secure shell) is simply a way to connect to a machine remotely, to securely access the terminal on a server, a linux machine, or even a router. SFTP is secure FTP, just transferring files over SSH. Next step would be to install some kind of Linux environment and learn that, look up nmap, top/iotop, and such command-line tools, connect to your router or NAS via ssh and poke around. Linux command-line is very powerful, just there is some learning curve. Coding shell scripts may not be fun, but is useful.

DNS is just the domain name system, DNS translates domains/hostnames/URLs to IP addresses. There are different types of DNS servers, some cache information to speed up later repeat access (your ISP's nameservers), others are authoritative/primary servers for some domain, etc. DNSmasq (masquarading) is used in small networks to provide DNS locally, it is also a DNS caching service on some linux boxes.