Scanning the Internet for Vulnerabilities

Mon Jun 20 20:09:44 UTC 2022

On 2022-06-20, at 19:36, goemon--- via NANOG <nanog at nanog.org> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, 20 Jun 2022, Carsten Bormann wrote:
>>> On 2022-06-20, at 14:14, J. Hellenthal <jhellenthal at dataix.net> wrote:
>>> Yeah that's another thing, "research" cause you need to learn it let's have them do it too, multiply that by every university \o/
>> there was some actual research involved.
>> 
>> I agree that there should be a very good reason to expend a tiny bit of everyone’s resources on this.
>> 
>> I do not agree that this externality makes any research in this space unethical.
> 
> Consent is what makes it unethical.

You consented to receiving packets by connecting to the Internet.

Now there is a limit to that consent (e.g., when these packets have an actual material negative effect), and here we enter an area where all simple schematic approaches fail — you really have to think about outcomes instead of expounding fundamentalist stances.

>> You signed up for this when you joined the Internet (er, stuck with the IPv4 Internet, I should probably say).
> 
> "If you dont like the unsolicited email, just hit delete" ?
> 
> How about ... NO.

How about: It’s really hard to properly apply analogies.

Unsolicited email wastes people’s time, and actually a lot of that.
(Responsibly performed) packet probes waste machine time, and very little so.
(If you are wasting human time on packet probes, you are holding it wrong.)
Totally different outcome, and hence totally different ethics.

This “discussion" is getting a bit off-topic.

Grüße, Carsten