Book Image

Nmap Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook, Third Edition - Third Edition

By : Paulino Calderon
Book Image

Nmap Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook, Third Edition - Third Edition

By: Paulino Calderon

Overview of this book

Nmap is one of the most powerful tools for network discovery and security auditing used by millions of IT professionals, from system administrators to cybersecurity specialists. This third edition of the Nmap: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook introduces Nmap and its family - Ncat, Ncrack, Ndiff, Zenmap, and the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) - and guides you through numerous tasks that are relevant to security engineers in today’s technology ecosystems. The book discusses some of the most common and useful tasks for scanning hosts, networks, applications, mainframes, Unix and Windows environments, and ICS/SCADA systems. Advanced Nmap users can benefit from this book by exploring the hidden functionalities within Nmap and its scripts as well as advanced workflows and configurations to fine-tune their scans. Seasoned users will find new applications and third-party tools that can help them manage scans and even start developing their own NSE scripts. Practical examples featured in a cookbook format make this book perfect for quickly remembering Nmap options, scripts and arguments, and more. By the end of this Nmap book, you will be able to successfully scan numerous hosts, exploit vulnerable areas, and gather valuable information.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Appendix A: HTTP, HTTP Pipelining, and Web Crawling Configuration Options
Appendix Β: Brute-Force Password Auditing Options
Appendix F: References and Additional Reading

Using NSE scripts against a target host

The Nmap project introduced a feature named the Nmap Scripting Engine that allows users to extend the capabilities of Nmap via Lua scripts. NSE scripts are very powerful and have become one of Nmap's main strengths, performing tasks from advanced version detection to vulnerability exploitation. At the moment, there are more than 600 scripts helping users perform a wide range of tasks using the target information obtained from the executed scan. Using host and port rules, they can even be configured to run without port scanning a target, something that is really useful during reconnaissance tasks.

This recipe describes how to run NSE scripts, and the different options available to configure their execution.

How to do it...

Enable script scan using the Nmap -sC option. This mode will select all NSE scripts belonging to the default category and execute them against our targets based on their host and port rules:

$ nmap -sC <target...