 Discovered by Salvatore Sanfilippo (also known by his handle "Antirez") in 1998, the idle scan has been used by many black hat "hackers" to covertly identify open ports on a target computer in preparation for attacking it.Although it was originally named "dumb scan", the term "idle scan" was coined in 1999, after the publication of a proof of concept 16-bit identification field (IPID) scanner named "idlescan", by Filipe Almeida (aka LiquidK).This type of scan can also be referenced as "zombie scan"; all the nomenclatures are due to the nature of one of the computers involved in the attack.