CAPEC-300
Port Scanning
An adversary uses a combination of techniques to determine the state of the ports on a remote target. Any service or application available for TCP or UDP networking will have a port open for communications over the network.
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Although common services have assigned port numbers, services and applications can run on arbitrary ports. Additionally, port scanning is complicated by the potential for any machine to have up to 65535 possible UDP or TCP services. The goal of port scanning is often broader than identifying open ports, but also give the adversary information concerning the firewall configuration.
Depending upon the method of scanning that is used, the process can be stealthy or more obtrusive, the latter being more easily detectable due to the volume of packets involved, anomalous packet traits, or system logging. Typical port scanning activity involves sending probes to a range of ports and observing the responses. There are four port statuses that this type of attack aims to identify: open, closed, filtered, and unfiltered. For strategic purposes it is useful for an adversary to distinguish between an open port that is protected by a filter vs. a closed port that is not protected by a filter. Making these fine grained distinctions is requires certain scan types. Collecting this type of information tells the adversary which ports can be attacked directly, which must be attacked with filter evasion techniques like fragmentation, source port scans, and which ports are unprotected (i.e. not firewalled) but aren't hosting a network service. An adversary often combines various techniques in order to gain a more complete picture of the firewall filtering mechanisms in place for a host.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-300: Port Scanning: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/300.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/300?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
The adversary requires logical access to the target's network in order to carry out this type of attack.
Resources required
The adversary requires a network mapping/scanning tool, or must conduct socket programming on the command line. Packet injection tools are also useful for this purpose. Depending upon the method used it may be necessary to sniff the network in order to see the response.
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Other | Confidentiality | |
| Bypass Protection Mechanism, Hide Activities | Confidentiality, Access Control, Authorization |
Weaknesses it exploits
- CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor
Recent CVEs with these weaknesses
- 4.3CVE-2026-124944
Information disclosure in the Marionette component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160.
- 4.3CVE-2026-124941
Information disclosure in the Security: RLBox component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160 and Firefox ESR 153.7.
- 4.3CVE-2026-124930
Information disclosure in the Address Bar component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160 and Firefox ESR 153.7.
- 4.3CVE-2026-124929
Information disclosure in the Layout: Form Controls component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160 and Firefox ESR 153.7.
- 4.3CVE-2026-124925
Information disclosure in the Layout component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160.
- 4.3CVE-2026-124909
Information disclosure in the Private Browsing component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 160 and Firefox ESR 153.7.
- 5.3CVE-2026-96769
The Extend B2B - Companies and Users Management for WooCommerce plugin for WordPress is vulnerable to Sensitive Information Exposure in all versions up to, and including, 2.1.4 via the register_company_api. This makes it possible for unaut…
- 7.5CVE-2026-63644
bird-lg-go is a BIRD looking glass in Go. Prior to version 1.4.7, unsanitized input path enables arbitrary local file read, allowing an unauthenticated remote attacker to read sensitive files such as /etc/shadow and /root/.bash_history. Th…
The newest records naming one of them. Each weakness's page lists them all.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-169 Footprinting
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