Nmap 6 released after three years of work

by jimmyjim • 14 years ago

213 31 14 years ago

chadlomax• 14 years ago

I can't believe it's been 3 years since they released v5. Truly one of the better open source security scanners out there. Thanks for sharing.

etrain• 14 years ago

I used nmap a lot during the 2.5 days (c. 2001), and was even a (very occasional) contributor as they were porting to Windows. I can safely say I have 0 idea how 90% of its functionality works anymore - and I think that's a testament to how far the project has come.

It was best of breed then, and is up there with the most successful open source projects - certainly in the security space, but maybe even anywhere.

Hats off to Fyodor and the rest of the team. This looks like really excellent work.

christianbryant• 14 years ago

Look forward to upgrading my 5.21. Congrats on a new major release.

wpietri• 14 years ago

Agreed! There are a few tools in the world that I love unreservedly, and nmap is one of them. (A couple of other networking ones are tcpdump, wireshark, and mtr.) It's one of those things where every key aspect has been thought through and polished so thoroughly that I want to send somebody a bouquet.

chadyj• 14 years ago

Everyone has seen Nmap used and might not even know it. It was famously used by Trinity in The Matrix, and has popped up in Die Hard, Bourne Ultimatum, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and more. http://nmap.org/movies.html

I wonder if Hollywood will upgrade.

majke• 14 years ago

Trinity was using nmap 2.54, how lame.

dfc4• 14 years ago

Whenever you buy a new network connected gizmo please scan it with nmap and please submit the OS/Service fingerprints if nmap does not know about the device. NMAP makes it super easy to contribute the the fingerprints db.

eisbaw• 14 years ago

Care to elaborate? A 5 min investigation on nmap.org didn't reveal how to contribute.

dfc4• 14 years ago

One of the ways nmap makes this super easy is that it prints out the submission page and asks you to submit the fingerprints if it does not know about the device:)

If you get a new device run a full scan against the device; all ports, OS detection and full service version scan.

Here is the page if you are curious:

http://nmap.org/submit/

drstrangevibes• 14 years ago

would they be interested in smart phones on a wireless network?

freehunter2• 14 years ago

In my experience, NMap hasn't been the best at identifying smartphones and other mobile devices. So from my point of view, yes, this would help. I don't know NMap's goals on that, though.

afhof• 14 years ago

Maybe I don't use Nmap enough, but I find the Nmap switches very difficult to remember. It usually takes a few minutes in the man pages, then a few more minutes in Google before I finally figure out how to do what I want. Perhaps this goes away with experience?

dfc4• 14 years ago

It definitely goes away with experience. When you use nmap regularly you only use 10% of the switches most of the time and typing them after nmap becomes muscle memory.

Garbage• 14 years ago

"Zenmap"[1] to the rescue. :)

[1] http://nmap.org/book/zenmap-profile-editor.html

dave1010uk• 14 years ago

From the release notes: "Gopher over IPv6!"

I'm really tempted to set up a gopher server on an IPv6-only host, just to try this out. While perhaps pointless, it's a testament to open source that NMAP includes this.

guylhem• 14 years ago

Well I have one :-) I still have to put some content on it though...

michael37• 14 years ago

It's been many years since I forgot how to access a gopher server.

sausagefeet• 14 years ago

Interestingly, this T-Mobile prepaid sim I'm on blocks me from nmap.org

aurora72• 14 years ago

#nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24 might be the most commonly used line of nmap. But it works best on V5.0 and not V5.x+

tshtf• 14 years ago

What's the problem?

Have you reported it on the nmap-dev mailing list with packet dumps?

oofabz• 14 years ago

That command works great for me using nmap 6. It finds all hosts on my network. And now with v6, I can do something similar to find IPv6 addresses on my network, with this command: sudo nmap -6 -sL --script targets-ipv6-\* --script-args=newtargets

zerop2• 14 years ago

As per the documentation http://nmap.org/6/ :

We also felt that the old -sP ("ping scan") option was a bit misleading because current versions of Nmap can go much further (including -sC and --traceroute) even with port scans disabled. We will retain support for the previous option names for the foreseeable future.

the_wanderer• 14 years ago

Great to see the large list of new features and improvements.

Get a copy and start scanning, don't just scan your web servers and Internet gateway. Have a crack at your Internet connected TV, WII and any other device that has an IP Address. If nothing else its fun. :)

JonnieCache• 14 years ago

>Have a crack at your Internet connected TV, WII and any other device that has an IP Address

Definitely do this. I can especially recommend it if you're a bored teenager. I learned a lot back in the day from abusing cheap gear like printers, routers and stuff.

SamGoody• 14 years ago

Besides Nmap's innate usefulness, it is part of the backbone of many other tools. How long before BackTrack upgrades? Tools like Metasploit, do they include their own Nmap (which would need to be upgraded), or relay on your having it?

zerop2• 14 years ago

Can I use nmap to detect who is talking to who on a network & over what ports? I dont want to install agent script on each node, but would install nmap on one of the nodes in the network.

freehunter2• 14 years ago

NMap can tell you what ports are being used by a device. tcpdump would be able to show the conversations.

thebluesky• 14 years ago

The link in the main document to the performance page: http://nmap.org/6/changes-performance leads to a 404 :(

Nmap 6 released after three years of work

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