Scanner

Overview

The term scanner is used in connection with a variety of hardware devices and software, including:

• Document scanner
• Flatbed scanner

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• Malware scanner
• Network scanner
• Optical scanner
• Port scanner
• System scanner
• Virus scanner
• Vulnerability scanner

The first two are hardware devices. The remainder generally are software programs employed by cyber criminals.

Cybercrime

"Some scanners are designed to scan only a single networked computer, gaining as much reconnaissance data about that system as possible. Others can scan any entire range of network addresses, seeking out those that appear to have a particular operating system or service running that may be vulnerable to an attack. Still others are designed to scan and map out entire Local Area Networks (LANs), identifying each host that resides on that network."