Port scanning is carried out by both hackers and information security professionals alike to probe network hosts and discover active services. Port scanning is often instrumental in exploiting potential vulnerabilities that exist in services running on a host; hence the reason for stealth port scans that try to evade firewall/IDS devices.

Although today’s IDS can pick up almost any type of traditional stealth scans, IDS or firewall evasion does exist and is commonly performed by using packet fragmentation or by using proxy hosts. This article looks at how these basic tcp stealth scans work. (more…)

Personal information of almost half the national population of Chile was leaked on the Internet at about 1:30 AM CLT on Saturday, May 10th.

The names, addresses, academic and social status information along with other details were uploaded to the popular file-sharing website, rapidshare.com and a Chilean file sharing site, compartelo.cl. The download links to three files were posted on the public forums on FayerWayer.com, the popular Chilean technology blog.

The information is reportedly obtained from Government bodies: the Dirección General de Movilización Nacional (Directorate of National Mobilization) – DGMN, the Servicio Electoral (Electoral Service) – SERVEL, the Ministry of Education – Mineduc. It also contains over 2 million telephone records for 849 cities in Chile

According to the conservative Chilean news agency, El Mercurio, police are still investigating the leaked information to confirm the hacker’s claims.

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