THESIS STATEMENT
Infamous computer activities, such as port scans and ping sweeps, which can lead to intrusion of systems of a company or network, which enables the intruders to gain access to the systems and do changes in the settings or extract important information. These activities can be detected and stopped or prevented using special skills tool set.

INTRODUCTION
One of the most common disreputable computer activities are ping sweeps and port scans. They lead to breach of systems by intruders which can harm the whole system or network protocols. There are millions of entities around the world that utilize the internet and the problem is that, many are unaware of the threats and vulnerabilities that are lurking around. These probes can be detected and prevented for to be in a safe position rather than compromise.

Ping Sweep and Port Scans Events
Two methods that are used to attack a network is ping sweep and port scans. These activities can be used with malicious intent against, as well as, in effort to try to protect a network. Ping sweeps and port scans has been a notorious and yet a useful tool for hackers and system administrators. Ping sweeps and port scans at times can be a bother to both system administrators and network managers. Ping sweeps and port scans work together and can be dangerous but it also can be prevented. A ping sweep, also known as an internet control message protocol sweep (ICMP) is a basic network scanning technique used to determine the range of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses that are being used.

Port Scans
It is one of the most common infamous computer activities. Usually the intruders hit the target machine and discovers the services being run on it. They plan to attach on any vulnerable service. If succeeded they can get an access over the machine through exploit. Java and Perl are the two languages in which exploit programs can be easily made. Generally the ports scanning rely on the theory that the target host is compatible with transmission control protocol. There are six types of port scans, the following are;
• TCP Scanning
• SYN Scanning
• UDP Scanning
• ACK Scanning
• Window Scanning
• FIN Scanning

Ping Sweeps
These activities are not unusual, they are commonly used by administrators in troubleshooting network issues; however, hackers also use ping sweeps to find active computers so they will know where to concentrate their attacks. At the moment, most computer networks are secured, but for an unsecured/unprepared network this can become a serious security breach. Hackers send not one ping but many packets at the same time in a giving day; this tends to slow down a network. When the hackers ping sweep finds an active computer it can send request for confidential information. Also ping sweeps are often used in conjunction with port scans in a similar discovery process. Ping sweeps instead are used to see what targets are available on the network. For instance, we may be on a 192.168.1.0 VLAN with only a dozen or so machines. Typically the router or DHCP server will assign individual IP addresses in order by request, but sometimes they get out of order and skip numbers.

CONCLUSION
With the advancement of the computer technology, system administrator obviously has had to grow with the fast pace of technology. With that come hackers whose intent is to maliciously disturb or steal information from a network. Ping sweeps and port scans are computer software or activities that hackers and system administrators use to gain access to personal and company networks. This paper will explain what ping sweeps and port scans are. It will inform you on how hackers and system administrators used ping sweeps and port scans. While describing some of these notorious computer activities, these techniques will also be shown how system administrators can use to benefit the company.