I just moved into my new apartment. It's a one bedroom 500sqft place. I moved here because I just got hired at Dell as a Dell-on-Call tech. support agent! I'm 19, so it's my first place. It's nice, this isn't a trashy place to live at all, the apartment ground has a pool, a fitness center, a tennis court, and a playground for the kids (me  ).

What's more is that since I have a decent paying job, I'm able to enjoy a 6mb connection here in my apartment. I did a speed test at Speakeasy.net and it's actually around 8mb, so I'm impressed with Comcast.

Now onto what happened yesterday.

About an hour after the guy finished installing the service and left, my firewall detected and blocked a huge port scan. I backtraced the IP to Louisiana Tech University. I looked up the place and got their number, and got in touch with their network administrator. I gave him the IP it was coming from, sure enough it was one of theirs on the campus. He said he was taking care of it "right now" with a grim sort of tone. lol  

So that was kinda funny. Anyway, just thought I would update you guys on what was going on.

Congrats Dr C. I do all my speed testing at Speakeasy because they thave a place in New York just across the river. The Tennis court would be lost to me, but not a fitness center.

Congrats.  And that's some awesome detective work.  Tell me how you do that.  If they're sharing a connection at the campus, wouldn't you only have the WAN IP?

I don't know if they were sharing a connection or not...seems they would be, but when I contacted the network admin he said that IP belonged to "one of their residents"...so, not sure what went on there, but he sounded pretty serious about taking care of it though.

Congrats!

Quote (Agent007 @ July 29 2006, 10:06 am)

Congrats.  And that's some awesome detective work.  Tell me how you do that.  If they're sharing a connection at the campus, wouldn't you only have the WAN IP?

It depends on your setup, you can have a gateway with one external IP that the world sees and a bunch of internal IPs that the world doesnt see or every box can use an external IP. The first as we know is more secure, the second is the greatest thing since sliced bread when it comes to tracking and logging.

Quote (CptCox @ July 29 2006, 3:07 pm)

It depends on your setup, you can have a gateway with one external IP that the world sees and a bunch of internal IPs that the world doesnt see or every box can use an external IP. The first as we know is more secure, the second is the greatest thing since sliced bread when it comes to tracking and logging.

Had to have been the latter then.

What I mean is how did you detect and backtrace them?

I'm envious beyond question.  I'm 22, have a job with a high school, and still don't make nearly enough to live on my own.

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What I mean is how did you detect and backtrace them?

It's easy to do...most *good* firewalls have a backtrace utility built into them, but even if yours doesn't, you can go to Arin.net and look up IP addresses. There are also programs out there that will backtrace an IP and give you a physical location on a map.

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I'm envious beyond question.  I'm 22, have a job with a high school, and still don't make nearly enough to live on my own.

Hey man, the only reason I'm this far is because I've been working with computers since I was 12 years old, and I had a Commodore 64 when I was 10. You've gotta figure out what you're best at, and what you enjoy doing you know...most of the time it isn't very obvious, sometimes it just occurs to you suddenly when you're eating a sandwich at a Steak 'N Shake. It doesn't stand out, you gotta figure it out you know...

And just so you know, I would respect a high school teacher long before I would anyone at Dell. My Dell job is the future, but high school was the starting point.