Book Image

Nmap: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Paulino Calderon
Book Image

Nmap: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Paulino Calderon

Overview of this book

This is the second edition of ‘Nmap 6: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook’. A book aimed for anyone who wants to master Nmap and its scripting engine through practical tasks for system administrators and penetration testers. Besides introducing the most powerful features of Nmap and related tools, common security auditing tasks for local and remote networks, web applications, databases, mail servers, Microsoft Windows machines and even ICS SCADA systems are explained step by step with exact commands and argument explanations. The book starts with the basic usage of Nmap and related tools like Ncat, Ncrack, Ndiff and Zenmap. The Nmap Scripting Engine is thoroughly covered through security checks used commonly in real-life scenarios applied for different types of systems. New chapters for Microsoft Windows and ICS SCADA systems were added and every recipe was revised. This edition reflects the latest updates and hottest additions to the Nmap project to date. The book will also introduce you to Lua programming and NSE script development allowing you to extend further the power of Nmap.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface
13
Brute Force Password Auditing Options
17
References and Additional Reading

Introduction


The Nmap Scripting Engine was introduced in 2007 in Version 4.5, and it extended its functionality to a whole new level using the information gathered during a network scan and performing additional tasks powered by the scripting language Lua. This feature has become a whole arsenal by itself, with almost 600 scripts already officially included, as you have learned throughout this book.

Lua is a scripting language currently used in other important projects, such as Wireshark, Suricata, Snort, and even Adobe Photoshop, for a lot of very good reasons but mainly because it 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 programming is a whole topic by itself, please refer to the Appendix E, Introduction to Lua, and if you need to go deeper, go read the official reference manual at http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/.

Note

The Nmap Scripting...