Do anyone of you have your own website or web server set up for me to test out some security programs to get a better understanding of the software. What will take place mostly will just be general scanning, vulnerability scanning, pinging and stuff like that. In no way will I abuse your site/server or try to gain any access whatsoever. I'm asking because I don't want to land myself in trouble by scanning websites/servers without permission.

I can just do it via a open wifi spot anonymously, but can't be assed leaving my place.

Let me know.

You can set up a VM for this with relative ease.

There are already projects underway to set up an NS&H training ground (so to speak), so you'll get that when everyone else does.

If you're in the US. Scanning is totally legal. You just can't penetrate the website.

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That being said, the site op can notify your ISP, and they probably won't be pleased.

This isn't much of a risk, though.

Hmm I think I'll wait for that NS&H thing to come around. I'm not from the U.S but the U.K, and I'm not even too sure if it is legal or illegal here, I heard it was illegal.. however, I'm damn sure not going to scan any American based websites, not after knowing how far you weirdo's will go to hunt someone down..like that poor gary mckinnon guy.

It's likely legal in the UK as well, and there really isn't much risk involved. The most the administrator would be able to do is leave you a nasty note, and your ISP might send you a letter, but a portscan alone won't warrant a disconnection.

I've been playing around with nmap on my LAN lately and it seems to be a fairly handy tool. It tells you the OS of the comp your scanning along with all the open ports and the applications listening on them.

I'm trying to figure out how to use that Snort program to make a log every time someone ping sweeps or port scans the LAN.

You do not need Snort, any decent firewall can do that. ( using logs ).
But you could do it using snort, i suppose you'll learn more doing it the snort way :-).

Ping sweep I don't know of, but I use portsentry to block people from portscanning my servers.

It's in the FreeBSD ports tree.

Yea that's one of the tools I wanted to test out, along with those features you mentioned. I did scan my own IP, but Nmap reported back saying something like..it wont scan my own network.

I wanted to get familiar with quite a few of the tools that come packed with backtrack distro.

You have servers?..let me scan them?...I also want to launch a few exploits that wont work deliberately , just to see some of the responses I get. I've been meaning to do this for a while now, but just never got around to it.

I'll probably just have to set up my pc with some service running on it, connect it up via a router..and scan that way. Really can't be assed setting up and shit. The pc has Vista on it and I've been trying to avoid ever turning it on ever again. I suppose I'm going to have to!