Researchers ping through first full 'Internet census' in 25 years

Fri Oct 12 13:49:35 UTC 2007

On Fri, 12 Oct 2007, Chris Owen wrote:

> You can't consider every wacko on the net when doing something like this. 
> Anyone who considers a ping an attack probably isn't worth worrying about.

I tend to agree, but back when I manned the abuse desk (among others) at 
my former employer, I would see abuse reports come in all the time that 
were basically a report from whatever security software someone was 
running on their PC, accompanied by a message that was usually something 
along the lines of this:

"HOST x.x.x.x ON YOUR NETWORK PINGED ME!!!!  I TAKE MY SECURITY 
SERIOUSLY!!  I'M CALLING THE FBI!!!"

The knee-jerk reaction is rarely the right one :)

jms