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

Adjusting performance parameters

Nmap not only adjusts itself to different network and target conditions while scanning, but it also supports several parameters that affect the behavior of Nmap, such as the number of hosts scanned concurrently, the number of retries, and the number of allowed probes. Learning how to adjust these parameters properly can reduce a lot of your scanning time.

This recipe explains the Nmap parameters that can be adjusted to improve performance.

How to do it...

Enter the following command, adjusting the values for your target and network conditions:

$ nmap --min-hostgroup 100 --max-hostgroup 500 --max-retries 2 <target>

How it works...

The command shown previously tells Nmap to scan and report by grouping no less than 100 (--min-hostgroup 100) and no more than 500 hosts (--max-hostgroup 500). It also tells Nmap to retry only twice before giving up on any port (--max-retries 2):

# nmap --min-hostgroup 100 --max-hostgroup 500 --max...