Patent attributes
A method of scanning a plurality of ports at one or more target IP addresses is disclosed. Each of the plurality of ports corresponds to a port number at one of the one or more target IP addresses, for example an IPv4 or IPv6 address. The method comprises assigning each port to one of a plurality of sets of ports and executing a plurality of port scanning processes at the same time on a common source machine (virtual or physical). Each port scanning process sends port probe requests to the ports of a respective set of the plurality of sets from a different respective source IP addresses. Thus, a different respective source IP address is associated with each set of the plurality of sets of ports, different from the source IP addresses associated with the remaining sets, and each set of target IP addresses receives probe requests from a different respective source IP address. The sets may be aligned with target addresses or may spread several target addresses or only part of the ports of a target address. For example, one or more of the plurality of port scanning processes may send port probe requests to more than one target IP address and/or two or more of the plurality of port scanning processes may send port probe requests to the same target IP address.
