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

Brute forcing HTTP authentication

Many home routers, IP webcams, and web applications still rely on HTTP authentication these days. As system administrators or penetration testers, we need to ensure that the system or user accounts are not using weak credentials. The http-brute NSE script can perform robust dictionary attacks against HTTP basic, digest, and NTLM authentication.

This recipe shows how to perform brute-force password auditing against web servers that are using HTTP authentication.

How to do it...

Use the following Nmap command to perform brute-force password auditing against a resource protected by HTTP's basic authentication:

$ nmap -p80 --script http-brute <target>

The results will return all the valid accounts (if any):

PORT STATE SERVICE REASON
80/tcp open      http syn-ack
| http-brute:
|    Accounts
|    admin:secret => Valid credentials
|    ...