What does it mean – Am I on the Internet? Why ask this question?
I want you to think about what it actually means.
So we have the Internet (Google or other search engines). Each device has an IP address. This means even your watch may have an IP address. Your IoT devices have IP addresses . Ok by IoT – Internet of Things – I mean power/on-off devices , the ones that control lights or other devices connected to outlets.
or other devices that may be connected (like TVs)
So pretty much anything that gets data or gives data to your computer like cameras has an IP address.
You see one of the first things the hacker will do is to recon your network, they will check out the network using a basic scan. Similar to nmap (Network map). What they are doing is to check what ‘ports are open’. A port is part of the IP protocol. Port 80 is a website, so the website at system X would have port 80 open and available to serve webpages to a request.
The following is a log of a fictitious system and company(notice the fake destination ip address of 111.111.111.111). Notice the dest(destination) port 25 which is email (smtp – simple mail transfer protocol)
Each piece of network traffic has a number of datapoints – source and destination IP address, port, Protocol, option, are some of the basics.
Thus what does this apparent traffic prove?
Coming back to the original question – what does it mean?
One can even map the Internet from anywhere . There is usually a number of items in the network and the hacker will use nmap (or equivalent) to knock on every device on the network.
So a hacker can check your system out and see what is running – then they will compare the open port with possible vulnerability reports on the Internet.
Thus if you are on the Internet you can be scanned and if you have a vulnerability you may get attacked – and in some cases it only takes minutes when a new machine is on the Internet where it can be reviewed and then taken over in the right circumstances.
The Solar Winds an exchange server attacks took advantage of vulnerabilities to the systems to make them susceptible .
I would recommend that you purchase my book to defend your systems better.