Book Image

Nmap 6: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook

Book Image

Nmap 6: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook

Overview of this book

Nmap is a well known security tool used by penetration testers and system administrators. The Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) has added the possibility to perform additional tasks using the collected host information. Tasks like advanced fingerprinting and service discovery, information gathering, and detection of security vulnerabilities."Nmap 6: Network exploration and security auditing cookbook" will help you master Nmap and its scripting engine. You will learn how to use this tool to do a wide variety of practical tasks for pentesting and network monitoring. Finally, after harvesting the power of NSE, you will also learn how to write your own NSE scripts."Nmap 6: Network exploration and security auditing cookbook" is a book full of practical knowledge for every security consultant, administrator or enthusiast looking to master Nmap. The book overviews the most important port scanning and host discovery techniques supported by Nmap. You will learn how to detect mis-configurations in web, mail and database servers and also how to implement your own monitoring system. The book also covers tasks for reporting, scanning numerous hosts, vulnerability detection and exploitation, and its strongest aspect; information gathering.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Nmap 6: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
References
Index

Introduction


The Nmap Scripting Engine was introduced in 2007 in Version 4.5, in order to extend Nmap's functionality to a whole new level by using the information gathered during a port or a network scan and performing additional tasks powered by the powerful scripting language Lua. This feature has become a whole arsenal by itself with almost 300 scripts already officially included. The amount of tasks you can accomplish with this feature is impressive, as you have learned throughout this book.

Lua is a scripting language currently used in other important projects, such as World of Warcraft, Wireshark, and Snort, for very good reasons. Lua is very lightweight and extensible. As an NSE developer, my experience with Lua has been very positive. The language is very powerful and flexible, yet with a clear and easy-to-learn syntax. Because Lua is a whole topic by itself, I will not be able to focus on all of its great features, but I recommend that you read the official reference manual at...