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NMAP(1) Nmap Reference Guide NMAP(1)
NAME
nmap - Network exploration tool and security / port scanner
SYNOPSIS
nmap [Scan Type...] [Options] {target specification}
DESCRIPTION
Nmap ("Network Mapper") is an open source tool for network exploration and security auditing. It was designed to rapidly
scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine
what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what
operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of
other characteristics. While Nmap is commonly used for security audits, many systems and network administrators find it
useful for routine tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service
uptime.
The output from Nmap is a list of scanned targets, with supplemental information on each depending on the options used.
Key among that information is the "interesting ports table".. That table lists the port number and protocol, service
name, and state. The state is either open, filtered, closed, or unfiltered. Open. means that an application on the
target machine is listening for connections/packets on that port. Filtered. means that a firewall, filter, or other
network obstacle is blocking the port so that Nmap cannot tell whether it is open or closed. Closed. ports have no
application listening on them, though they could open up at any time. Ports are classified as unfiltered. when they are
responsive to Nmap's probes, but Nmap cannot determine whether they are open or closed. Nmap reports the state
combinations open|filtered. and closed|filtered. when it cannot determine which of the two states describe a port. The
port table may also include software version details when version detection has been requested. When an IP protocol scan
is requested (-sO), Nmap provides information on supported IP protocols rather than listening ports.
In addition to the interesting ports table, Nmap can provide further information on targets, including reverse DNS names,
operating system guesses, device types, and MAC addresses.
A typical Nmap scan is shown in Example 1. The only Nmap arguments used in this example are -A, to enable OS and version
detection, script scanning, and traceroute; -T4 for faster execution; and then the two target hostnames.
Example 1. A representative Nmap scan
# nmap -A -T4 scanme.nmap.org
Starting Nmap ( http://nmap.org )
Interesting ports on scanme.nmap.org (64.13.134.52):
Not shown: 994 filtered ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
22/tcp open ssh OpenSSH 4.3 (protocol 2.0)
25/tcp closed smtp
53/tcp open domain ISC BIND 9.3.4
70/tcp closed gopher
80/tcp open http Apache httpd 2.2.2 ((Fedora))
|_ HTML title: Go ahead and ScanMe!
113/tcp closed auth
Device type: general purpose
Running: Linux 2.6.X
OS details: Linux 2.6.20-1 (Fedora Core 5)
TRACEROUTE (using port 80/tcp)
HOP RTT ADDRESS
[Cut first seven hops for brevity]
8 10.59 so-4-2-0.mpr3.pao1.us.above.net (64.125.28.142)
9 11.00 metro0.sv.svcolo.com (208.185.168.173)
10 9.93 scanme.nmap.org (64.13.134.52)
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 17.00 seconds
The newest version of Nmap can be obtained from http://nmap.org. The newest version of this man page is available at
http://nmap.org/book/man.html. It is also included as a chapter of Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project
Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning (see http://nmap.org/book/).
OPTIONS SUMMARY
This options summary is printed when Nmap is run with no arguments, and the latest version is always available at
http://nmap.org/data/nmap.usage.txt. It helps people remember the most common options, but is no substitute for the
in-depth documentation in the rest of this manual. Some obscure options aren't even included here.
Nmap 5.21 ( http://nmap.org )
Usage: nmap [Scan Type(s)] [Options] {target specification}
TARGET SPECIFICATION:
Can pass hostnames, IP addresses, networks, etc.
Ex: scanme.nmap.org, 192.168.0.1; 10.0.0-255.1-254
-iL <inputfilename>: Input from list of hosts/networks
-iR <num hosts>: Choose random targets
--exclude <host1[,host2][,host3],...>: Exclude hosts/networks
--excludefile <exclude_file>: Exclude list from file
HOST DISCOVERY:
-sL: List Scan - simply list targets to scan
-sP: Ping Scan - go no further than determining if host is online
-PN: Treat all hosts as online -- skip host discovery
-PS/PA/PU/PY[portlist]: TCP SYN/ACK, UDP or SCTP discovery to given ports
-PE/PP/PM: ICMP echo, timestamp, and netmask request discovery probes
-PO[protocol list]: IP Protocol Ping
-n/-R: Never do DNS resolution/Always resolve [default: sometimes]
--dns-servers <serv1[,serv2],...>: Specify custom DNS servers
--system-dns: Use OS's DNS resolver
--traceroute: Trace hop path to each host
SCAN TECHNIQUES:
-sS/sT/sA/sW/sM: TCP SYN/Connect()/ACK/Window/Maimon scans
-sU: UDP Scan
-sN/sF/sX: TCP Null, FIN, and Xmas scans
--scanflags <flags>: Customize TCP scan flags
-sI <zombie host[:probeport]>: Idle scan
-sY/sZ: SCTP INIT/COOKIE-ECHO scans
-sO: IP protocol scan
-b <FTP relay host>: FTP bounce scan
PORT SPECIFICATION AND SCAN ORDER:
-p <port ranges>: Only scan specified ports
Ex: -p22; -p1-65535; -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080
-F: Fast mode - Scan fewer ports than the default scan
-r: Scan ports consecutively - don't randomize
--top-ports <number>: Scan <number> most common ports
--port-ratio <ratio>: Scan ports more common than <ratio>
SERVICE/VERSION DETECTION:
-sV: Probe open ports to determine service/version info
--version-intensity <level>: Set from 0 (light) to 9 (try all probes)
--version-light: Limit to most likely probes (intensity 2)
--version-all: Try every single probe (intensity 9)
--version-trace: Show detailed version scan activity (for debugging)
SCRIPT SCAN:
-sC: equivalent to --script=default
--script=<Lua scripts>: <Lua scripts> is a comma separated list of
directories, script-files or script-categories
--script-args=<n1=v1,[n2=v2,...]>: provide arguments to scripts
--script-trace: Show all data sent and received
--script-updatedb: Update the script database.
OS DETECTION:
-O: Enable OS detection
--osscan-limit: Limit OS detection to promising targets
--osscan-guess: Guess OS more aggressively
TIMING AND PERFORMANCE:
Options which take <time> are in milliseconds, unless you append 's'
(seconds), 'm' (minutes), or 'h' (hours) to the value (e.g. 30m).
-T<0-5>: Set timing template (higher is faster)
--min-hostgroup/max-hostgroup <size>: Parallel host scan group sizes
--min-parallelism/max-parallelism <time>: Probe parallelization
--min-rtt-timeout/max-rtt-timeout/initial-rtt-timeout <time>: Specifies
probe round trip time.
--max-retries <tries>: Caps number of port scan probe retransmissions.
--host-timeout <time>: Give up on target after this long
--scan-delay/--max-scan-delay <time>: Adjust delay between probes
--min-rate <number>: Send packets no slower than <number> per second
--max-rate <number>: Send packets no faster than <number> per second
FIREWALL/IDS EVASION AND SPOOFING:
-f; --mtu <val>: fragment packets (optionally w/given MTU)
-D <decoy1,decoy2[,ME],...>: Cloak a scan with decoys
-S <IP_Address>: Spoof source address
-e <iface>: Use specified interface
-g/--source-port <portnum>: Use given port number
--data-length <num>: Append random data to sent packets
--ip-options <options>: Send packets with specified ip options
--ttl <val>: Set IP time-to-live field
--spoof-mac <mac address/prefix/vendor name>: Spoof your MAC address
--badsum: Send packets with a bogus TCP/UDP/SCTP checksum
--adler32: Use deprecated Adler32 instead of CRC32C for SCTP checksums
OUTPUT:
-oN/-oX/-oS/-oG <file>: Output scan in normal, XML, s|<rIpt kIddi3,
and Grepable format, respectively, to the given filename.
-oA <basename>: Output in the three major formats at once
-v: Increase verbosity level (use twice or more for greater effect)
-d[level]: Set or increase debugging level (Up to 9 is meaningful)
--reason: Display the reason a port is in a particular state
--open: Only show open (or possibly open) ports
--packet-trace: Show all packets sent and received
--iflist: Print host interfaces and routes (for debugging)
--log-errors: Log errors/warnings to the normal-format output file
--append-output: Append to rather than clobber specified output files
--resume <filename>: Resume an aborted scan
--stylesheet <path/URL>: XSL stylesheet to transform XML output to HTML
--webxml: Reference stylesheet from Nmap.Org for more portable XML
--no-stylesheet: Prevent associating of XSL stylesheet w/XML output
MISC:
-6: Enable IPv6 scanning
-A: Enables OS detection and Version detection, Script scanning and Traceroute
--datadir <dirname>: Specify custom Nmap data file location
--send-eth/--send-ip: Send using raw ethernet frames or IP packets
--privileged: Assume that the user is fully privileged
--unprivileged: Assume the user lacks raw socket privileges
-V: Print version number
-h: Print this help summary page.
EXAMPLES:
nmap -v -A scanme.nmap.org
nmap -v -sP 192.168.0.0/16 10.0.0.0/8
nmap -v -iR 10000 -PN -p 80
SEE THE MAN PAGE (http://nmap.org/book/man.html) FOR MORE OPTIONS AND EXAMPLES
TARGET SPECIFICATION
Everything on the Nmap command-line that isn't an option (or option argument) is treated as a target host specification.
The simplest case is to specify a target IP address or hostname for scanning.
Sometimes you wish to scan a whole network of adjacent hosts. For this, Nmap supports CIDR-style. addressing. You can
append /numbits to an IPv4 address or hostname and Nmap will scan every IP address for which the first numbits are the
same as for the reference IP or hostname given. For example, 192.168.10.0/24 would scan the 256 hosts between
192.168.10.0 (binary: 11000000 10101000 00001010 00000000) and 192.168.10.255 (binary: 11000000 10101000 00001010
11111111), inclusive. 192.168.10.40/24 would scan exactly the same targets. Given that the host scanme.nmap.org. is at
the IP address 64.13.134.52, the specification scanme.nmap.org/16 would scan the 65,536 IP addresses between 64.13.0.0
and 64.13.255.255. The smallest allowed value is /0, which scans the whole Internet. The largest value is /32, which
scans just the named host or IP address because all address bits are fixed.
CIDR notation is short but not always flexible enough. For example, you might want to scan 192.168.0.0/16 but skip any
IPs ending with .0 or .255 because they may be used as subnet network and broadcast addresses. Nmap supports this through
octet range addressing. Rather than specify a normal IP address, you can specify a comma-separated list of numbers or
ranges for each octet. For example, 192.168.0-255.1-254 will skip all addresses in the range that end in .0 or .255, and
192.168.3-5,7.1 will scan the four addresses 192.168.3.1, 192.168.4.1, 192.168.5.1, and 192.168.7.1. Either side of a
range may be omitted; the default values are 0 on the left and 255 on the right. Using - by itself is the same as 0-255,
but remember to use 0- in the first octet so the target specification doesn't look like a command-line option. Ranges
need not be limited to the final octets: the specifier 0-255.0-255.13.37 will perform an Internet-wide scan for all IP
addresses ending in 13.37. This sort of broad sampling can be useful for Internet surveys and research.
IPv6 addresses can only be specified by their fully qualified IPv6 address or hostname. CIDR and octet ranges aren't
supported for IPv6 because they are rarely useful.
Nmap accepts multiple host specifications on the command line, and they don't need to be the same type. The command nmap
scanme.nmap.org 192.168.0.0/8 10.0.0,1,3-7.- does what you would expect.
While targets are usually specified on the command lines, the following options are also available to control target
selection:
-iL inputfilename (Input from list) .
Reads target specifications from inputfilename. Passing a huge list of hosts is often awkward on the command line,
yet it is a common desire. For example, your DHCP server might export a list of 10,000 current leases that you wish
to scan. Or maybe you want to scan all IP addresses except for those to locate hosts using unauthorized static IP
addresses. Simply generate the list of hosts to scan and pass that filename to Nmap as an argument to the -iL option.
Entries can be in any of the formats accepted by Nmap on the command line (IP address, hostname, CIDR, IPv6, or octet
ranges). Each entry must be separated by one or more spaces, tabs, or newlines. You can specify a hyphen (-) as the
filename if you want Nmap to read hosts from standard input rather than an actual file.
The input file may contain comments that start with # and extend to the end of the line.
-iR num hosts (Choose random targets) .
For Internet-wide surveys and other research, you may want to choose targets at random. The num hosts argument tells
Nmap how many IPs to generate. Undesirable IPs such as those in certain private, multicast, or unallocated address
ranges are automatically skipped. The argument 0 can be specified for a never-ending scan. Keep in mind that some
network administrators bristle at unauthorized scans of their networks and may complain. Use this option at your own
risk! If you find yourself really bored one rainy afternoon, try the command nmap -sS -PS80 -iR 0 -p 80 to locate
random web servers for browsing.
--exclude host1[,host2[,...]] (Exclude hosts/networks) .
Specifies a comma-separated list of targets to be excluded from the scan even if they are part of the overall network
range you specify. The list you pass in uses normal Nmap syntax, so it can include hostnames, CIDR netblocks, octet
ranges, etc. This can be useful when the network you wish to scan includes untouchable mission-critical servers,
systems that are known to react adversely to port scans, or subnets administered by other people.
--excludefile exclude_file (Exclude list from file) .
This offers the same functionality as the --exclude option, except that the excluded targets are provided in a
newline, space, or tab delimited exclude_file rather than on the command line.
The exclude file may contain comments that start with # and extend to the end of the line.
HOST DISCOVERY
One of the very first steps in any network reconnaissance mission is to reduce a (sometimes huge) set of IP ranges into a
list of active or interesting hosts. Scanning every port of every single IP address is slow and usually unnecessary. Of
course what makes a host interesting depends greatly on the scan purposes. Network administrators may only be interested
in hosts running a certain service, while security auditors may care about every single device with an IP address. An
administrator may be comfortable using just an ICMP ping to locate hosts on his internal network, while an external
penetration tester may use a diverse set of dozens of probes in an attempt to evade firewall restrictions.
Because host discovery needs are so diverse, Nmap offers a wide variety of options for customizing the techniques used.
Host discovery is sometimes called ping scan, but it goes well beyond the simple ICMP echo request packets associated
with the ubiquitous ping tool. Users can skip the ping step entirely with a list scan (-sL) or by disabling ping (-PN),
or engage the network with arbitrary combinations of multi-port TCP SYN/ACK, UDP, SCTP INIT and ICMP probes. The goal of
these probes is to solicit responses which demonstrate that an IP address is actually active (is being used by a host or
network device). On many networks, only a small percentage of IP addresses are active at any given time. This is
particularly common with private address space such as 10.0.0.0/8. That network has 16 million IPs, but I have seen it
used by companies with less than a thousand machines. Host discovery can find those machines in a sparsely allocated sea
of IP addresses.
If no host discovery options are given, Nmap sends an ICMP echo request, a TCP SYN packet to port 443, and TCP ACK packet
to port 80, and an ICMP timestamp request. These defaults are equivalent to the -PE -PS443 -PA80 -PP options. An
exception to this is that an ARP scan is used for any targets which are on a local ethernet network. For unprivileged
Unix shell users, the default probes are a SYN packet to ports 80 and 443 using the connect system call.. This host
discovery is often sufficient when scanning local networks, but a more comprehensive set of discovery probes is
recommended for security auditing.
The -P* options (which select ping types) can be combined. You can increase your odds of penetrating strict firewalls by
sending many probe types using different TCP ports/flags and ICMP codes. Also note that ARP discovery (-PR). is done by
default against targets on a local ethernet network even if you specify other -P* options, because it is almost always
faster and more effective.
By default, Nmap does host discovery and then performs a port scan against each host it determines is online. This is
true even if you specify non-default host discovery types such as UDP probes (-PU). Read about the -sP option to learn
how to perform only host discovery, or use -PN to skip host discovery and port scan all target hosts. The following
options control host discovery:
-sL (List Scan) .
The list scan is a degenerate form of host discovery that simply lists each host of the network(s) specified, without
sending any packets to the target hosts. By default, Nmap still does reverse-DNS resolution on the hosts to learn
their names. It is often surprising how much useful information simple hostnames give out. For example, fw.chi is the
name of one company's Chicago firewall. Nmap also reports the total number of IP addresses at the end. The list scan
is a good sanity check to ensure that you have proper IP addresses for your targets. If the hosts sport domain names
you do not recognize, it is worth investigating further to prevent scanning the wrong company's network.
Since the idea is to simply print a list of target hosts, options for higher level functionality such as port
scanning, OS detection, or ping scanning cannot be combined with this. If you wish to disable ping scanning while
still performing such higher level functionality, read up on the -PN (skip ping) option.
-sP (Skip port scan) .
This option tells Nmap not to do a port scan after host discovery, and only print out the available hosts that
responded to the scan. This is often known as a "ping scan", but you can also request that traceroute and NSE host
scripts be run. This is by default one step more intrusive than the list scan, and can often be used for the same
purposes. It allows light reconnaissance of a target network without attracting much attention. Knowing how many
hosts are up is more valuable to attackers than the list provided by list scan of every single IP and host name.
Systems administrators often find this option valuable as well. It can easily be used to count available machines on
a network or monitor server availability. This is often called a ping sweep, and is more reliable than pinging the
broadcast address because many hosts do not reply to broadcast queries.
The -sP option sends an ICMP echo request, TCP SYN to port 443, TCP ACK to port 80, and an ICMP timestamp request by
default. When executed by an unprivileged user, only SYN packets are sent (using a connect call) to ports 80 and 443
on the target. When a privileged user tries to scan targets on a local ethernet network, ARP requests are used unless
--send-ip was specified. The -sP option can be combined with any of the discovery probe types (the -P* options,
excluding -PN) for greater flexibility. If any of those probe type and port number options are used, the default
probes are overridden. When strict firewalls are in place between the source host running Nmap and the target
network, using those advanced techniques is recommended. Otherwise hosts could be missed when the firewall drops
probes or their responses.
-PN (No ping) .
This option skips the Nmap discovery stage altogether. Normally, Nmap uses this stage to determine active machines
for heavier scanning. By default, Nmap only performs heavy probing such as port scans, version detection, or OS
detection against hosts that are found to be up. Disabling host discovery with -PN causes Nmap to attempt the
requested scanning functions against every target IP address specified. So if a class B sized target address space
(/16) is specified on the command line, all 65,536 IP addresses are scanned. Proper host discovery is skipped as with
the list scan, but instead of stopping and printing the target list, Nmap continues to perform requested functions as
if each target IP is active. To skip ping scan and port scan, while still allowing NSE to run, use the two options
-PN -sP together.
For machines on a local ethernet network, ARP scanning will still be performed (unless --send-ip is specified)
because Nmap needs MAC addresses to further scan target hosts. This option flag used to be P0 (uses zero), but was
renamed to avoid confusion with protocol ping's PO (uses the letter O) flag.
-PS port list (TCP SYN Ping) .
This option sends an empty TCP packet with the SYN flag set. The default destination port is 80 (configurable at
compile time by changing DEFAULT_TCP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC in nmap.h). Alternate ports can be specified as a parameter.
The syntax is the same as for the -p except that port type specifiers like T: are not allowed. Examples are -PS22 and
-PS22-25,80,113,1050,35000. Note that there can be no space between -PS and the port list. If multiple probes are
specified they will be sent in parallel.
The SYN flag suggests to the remote system that you are attempting to establish a connection. Normally the
destination port will be closed, and a RST (reset) packet sent back. If the port happens to be open, the target will
take the second step of a TCP three-way-handshake. by responding with a SYN/ACK TCP packet. The machine running Nmap
then tears down the nascent connection by responding with a RST rather than sending an ACK packet which would
complete the three-way-handshake and establish a full connection. The RST packet is sent by the kernel of the machine
running Nmap in response to the unexpected SYN/ACK, not by Nmap itself.
Nmap does not care whether the port is open or closed. Either the RST or SYN/ACK response discussed previously tell
Nmap that the host is available and responsive.
On Unix boxes, only the privileged user root. is generally able to send and receive raw TCP packets.. For
unprivileged users, a workaround is automatically employed. whereby the connect system call is initiated against
each target port. This has the effect of sending a SYN packet to the target host, in an attempt to establish a
connection. If connect returns with a quick success or an ECONNREFUSED failure, the underlying TCP stack must have
received a SYN/ACK or RST and the host is marked available. If the connection attempt is left hanging until a timeout
is reached, the host is marked as down. This workaround is also used for IPv6 connections, as raw IPv6 packet
building support is not yet available in Nmap..
-PA port list (TCP ACK Ping) .
The TCP ACK ping is quite similar to the just-discussed SYN ping. The difference, as you could likely guess, is that
the TCP ACK flag is set instead of the SYN flag. Such an ACK packet purports to be acknowledging data over an
established TCP connection, but no such connection exists. So remote hosts should always respond with a RST packet,
disclosing their existence in the process.
The -PA option uses the same default port as the SYN probe (80) and can also take a list of destination ports in the
same format. If an unprivileged user tries this, or an IPv6 target is specified, the connect workaround discussed
previously is used. This workaround is imperfect because connect is actually sending a SYN packet rather than an ACK.
The reason for offering both SYN and ACK ping probes is to maximize the chances of bypassing firewalls. Many
administrators configure routers and other simple firewalls to block incoming SYN packets except for those destined
for public services like the company web site or mail server. This prevents other incoming connections to the
organization, while allowing users to make unobstructed outgoing connections to the Internet. This non-stateful
approach takes up few resources on the firewall/router and is widely supported by hardware and software filters. The
Linux Netfilter/iptables. firewall software offers the --syn convenience option to implement this stateless
approach. When stateless firewall rules such as this are in place, SYN ping probes (-PS) are likely to be blocked
when sent to closed target ports. In such cases, the ACK probe shines as it cuts right through these rules.
Another common type of firewall uses stateful rules that drop unexpected packets. This feature was initially found
mostly on high-end firewalls, though it has become much more common over the years. The Linux Netfilter/iptables
system supports this through the --state option, which categorizes packets based on connection state. A SYN probe is
more likely to work against such a system, as unexpected ACK packets are generally recognized as bogus and dropped. A
solution to this quandary is to send both SYN and ACK probes by specifying -PS and -PA.
-PU port list (UDP Ping) .
Another host discovery option is the UDP ping, which sends a UDP packet to the given ports. For most ports, the
packet will be empty, though for a few a protocol-specific payload will be sent that is more likely to get a
response.. See the file payload.cc. for exactly which ports have payloads. The --data-length. option sends a
fixed-length random payload for all ports.
The port list takes the same format as with the previously discussed -PS and -PA options. If no ports are specified,
the default is 40125. This default can be configured at compile-time by changing DEFAULT_UDP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC. in
nmap.h.. A highly uncommon port is used by default because sending to open ports is often undesirable for this
particular scan type.
Upon hitting a closed port on the target machine, the UDP probe should elicit an ICMP port unreachable packet in
return. This signifies to Nmap that the machine is up and available. Many other types of ICMP errors, such as
host/network unreachables or TTL exceeded are indicative of a down or unreachable host. A lack of response is also
interpreted this way. If an open port is reached, most services simply ignore the empty packet and fail to return any
response. This is why the default probe port is 40125, which is highly unlikely to be in use. A few services, such as
the Character Generator (chargen) protocol, will respond to an empty UDP packet, and thus disclose to Nmap that the
machine is available.
The primary advantage of this scan type is that it bypasses firewalls and filters that only screen TCP. For example,
I once owned a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless broadband router. The external interface of this device filtered all TCP
ports by default, but UDP probes would still elicit port unreachable messages and thus give away the device.
-PY port list (SCTP INIT Ping) .
This option sends an SCTP packet containing a minimal INIT chunk. The default destination port is 80 (configurable at
compile time by changing DEFAULT_SCTP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC in nmap.h). Alternate ports can be specified as a parameter.
The syntax is the same as for the -p except that port type specifiers like S: are not allowed. Examples are -PY22 and
-PY22,80,179,5060. Note that there can be no space between -PY and the port list. If multiple probes are specified
they will be sent in parallel.
The INIT chunk suggests to the remote system that you are attempting to establish an association. Normally the
destination port will be closed, and an ABORT chunk will be sent back. If the port happens to be open, the target
will take the second step of an SCTP four-way-handshake. by responding with an INIT-ACK chunk. If the machine
running Nmap has a functional SCTP stack, then it tears down the nascent association by responding with an ABORT
chunk rather than sending a COOKIE-ECHO chunk which would be the next step in the four-way-handshake. The ABORT
packet is sent by the kernel of the machine running Nmap in response to the unexpected INIT-ACK, not by Nmap itself.
Nmap does not care whether the port is open or closed. Either the ABORT or INIT-ACK response discussed previously
tell Nmap that the host is available and responsive.
On Unix boxes, only the privileged user root. is generally able to send and receive raw SCTP packets.. Using SCTP
INIT Pings is currently not possible for unprivileged users.. The same limitation applies to IPv6, which is
currently not supported for SCTP INIT Ping..
-PE; -PP; -PM (ICMP Ping Types) .
In addition to the unusual TCP, UDP and SCTP host discovery types discussed previously, Nmap can send the standard
packets sent by the ubiquitous ping program. Nmap sends an ICMP type 8 (echo request) packet to the target IP
addresses, expecting a type 0 (echo reply) in return from available hosts.. Unfortunately for network explorers,
many hosts and firewalls now block these packets, rather than responding as required by RFC 1122[2]. For this reason,
ICMP-only scans are rarely reliable enough against unknown targets over the Internet. But for system administrators
monitoring an internal network, they can be a practical and efficient approach. Use the -PE option to enable this
echo request behavior.
While echo request is the standard ICMP ping query, Nmap does not stop there. The ICMP standards (RFC 792[3]. and
RFC 950[4]. "a host SHOULD NOT implement these messages". Timestamp and address mask queries can be sent with the
-PP and -PM options, respectively. A timestamp reply (ICMP code 14) or address mask reply (code 18) discloses that
the host is available. These two queries can be valuable when administrators specifically block echo request packets
while forgetting that other ICMP queries can be used for the same purpose.
-PO protocol list (IP Protocol Ping) .
The newest host discovery option is the IP protocol ping, which sends IP packets with the specified protocol number
set in their IP header. The protocol list takes the same format as do port lists in the previously discussed TCP, UDP
and SCTP host discovery options. If no protocols are specified, the default is to send multiple IP packets for ICMP
(protocol 1), IGMP (protocol 2), and IP-in-IP (protocol 4). The default protocols can be configured at compile-time
by changing DEFAULT_PROTO_PROBE_PORT_SPEC. in nmap.h. Note that for the ICMP, IGMP, TCP (protocol 6), UDP (protocol
17) and SCTP (protocol 132), the packets are sent with the proper protocol headers. while other protocols are sent
with no additional data beyond the IP header (unless the --data-length. option is specified).
This host discovery method looks for either responses using the same protocol as a probe, or ICMP protocol
unreachable messages which signify that the given protocol isn't supported on the destination host. Either type of
response signifies that the target host is alive.
-PR (ARP Ping) .
One of the most common Nmap usage scenarios is to scan an ethernet LAN. On most LANs, especially those using private
address ranges specified by RFC 1918[5], the vast majority of IP addresses are unused at any given time. When Nmap
tries to send a raw IP packet such as an ICMP echo request, the operating system must determine the destination
hardware (ARP) address corresponding to the target IP so that it can properly address the ethernet frame. This is
often slow and problematic, since operating systems weren't written with the expectation that they would need to do
millions of ARP requests against unavailable hosts in a short time period.
ARP scan puts Nmap and its optimized algorithms in charge of ARP requests. And if it gets a response back, Nmap
doesn't even need to worry about the IP-based ping packets since it already knows the host is up. This makes ARP scan
much faster and more reliable than IP-based scans. So it is done by default when scanning ethernet hosts that Nmap
detects are on a local ethernet network. Even if different ping types (such as -PE or -PS) are specified, Nmap uses
ARP instead for any of the targets which are on the same LAN. If you absolutely don't want to do an ARP scan, specify
--send-ip.
--traceroute (Trace path to host) .
Traceroutes are performed post-scan using information from the scan results to determine the port and protocol most
likely to reach the target. It works with all scan types except connect scans (-sT) and idle scans (-sI). All traces
use Nmap's dynamic timing model and are performed in parallel.
Traceroute works by sending packets with a low TTL (time-to-live) in an attempt to elicit ICMP Time Exceeded messages
from intermediate hops between the scanner and the target host. Standard traceroute implementations start with a TTL
of 1 and increment the TTL until the destination host is reached. Nmap's traceroute starts with a high TTL and then
decrements the TTL until it reaches zero. Doing it backwards lets Nmap employ clever caching algorithms to speed up
traces over multiple hosts. On average Nmap sends 5-10 fewer packets per host, depending on network conditions. If a
single subnet is being scanned (i.e. 192.168.0.0/24) Nmap may only have to send a single packet to most hosts.
-n (No DNS resolution) .
Tells Nmap to never do reverse DNS resolution on the active IP addresses it finds. Since DNS can be slow even with
Nmap's built-in parallel stub resolver, this option can slash scanning times.
-R (DNS resolution for all targets) .
Tells Nmap to always do reverse DNS resolution on the target IP addresses. Normally reverse DNS is only performed
against responsive (online) hosts.
--system-dns (Use system DNS resolver) .
By default, Nmap resolves IP addresses by sending queries directly to the name servers configured on your host and
then listening for responses. Many requests (often dozens) are performed in parallel to improve performance. Specify
this option to use your system resolver instead (one IP at a time via the getnameinfo call). This is slower and
rarely useful unless you find a bug in the Nmap parallel resolver (please let us know if you do). The system resolver
is always used for IPv6 scans.
--dns-servers server1[,server2[,...]] (Servers to use for reverse DNS queries) .
By default, Nmap determines your DNS servers (for rDNS resolution) from your resolv.conf file (Unix) or the Registry
(Win32). Alternatively, you may use this option to specify alternate servers. This option is not honored if you are
using --system-dns or an IPv6 scan. Using multiple DNS servers is often faster, especially if you choose
authoritative servers for your target IP space. This option can also improve stealth, as your requests can be bounced
off just about any recursive DNS server on the Internet.
This option also comes in handy when scanning private networks. Sometimes only a few name servers provide proper rDNS
information, and you may not even know where they are. You can scan the network for port 53 (perhaps with version
detection), then try Nmap list scans (-sL) specifying each name server one at a time with --dns-servers until you
find one which works.
PORT SCANNING BASICS
While Nmap has grown in functionality over the years, it began as an efficient port scanner, and that remains its core
function. The simple command nmap target scans more than 1660 TCP ports on the host target. While many port scanners have
traditionally lumped all ports into the open or closed states, Nmap is much more granular. It divides ports into six
states: open, closed, filtered, unfiltered, open|filtered, or closed|filtered.
These states are not intrinsic properties of the port itself, but describe how Nmap sees them. For example, an Nmap scan
from the same network as the target may show port 135/tcp as open, while a scan at the same time with the same options
from across the Internet might show that port as filtered.
The six port states recognized by Nmap
An application is actively accepting TCP connections, UDP datagrams or SCTP associations on this port. Finding these
is often the primary goal of port scanning. Security-minded people know that each open port is an avenue for attack.
Attackers and pen-testers want to exploit the open ports, while administrators try to close or protect them with
firewalls without thwarting legitimate users. Open ports are also interesting for non-security scans because they
show services available for use on the network.
A closed port is accessible (it receives and responds to Nmap probe packets), but there is no application listening
on it. They can be helpful in showing that a host is up on an IP address (host discovery, or ping scanning), and as
part of OS detection. Because closed ports are reachable, it may be worth scanning later in case some open up.
Administrators may want to consider blocking such ports with a firewall. Then they would appear in the filtered
state, discussed next.
Nmap cannot determine whether the port is open because packet filtering prevents its probes from reaching the port.
The filtering could be from a dedicated firewall device, router rules, or host-based firewall software. These ports
frustrate attackers because they provide so little information. Sometimes they respond with ICMP error messages such
as type 3 code 13 (destination unreachable: communication administratively prohibited), but filters that simply drop
probes without responding are far more common. This forces Nmap to retry several times just in case the probe was
dropped due to network congestion rather than filtering. This slows down the scan dramatically.
The unfiltered state means that a port is accessible, but Nmap is unable to determine whether it is open or closed.
Only the ACK scan, which is used to map firewall rulesets, classifies ports into this state. Scanning unfiltered
ports with other scan types such as Window scan, SYN scan, or FIN scan, may help resolve whether the port is open.
Nmap places ports in this state when it is unable to determine whether a port is open or filtered. This occurs for
scan types in which open ports give no response. The lack of response could also mean that a packet filter dropped
the probe or any response it elicited. So Nmap does not know for sure whether the port is open or being filtered. The
UDP, IP protocol, FIN, NULL, and Xmas scans classify ports this way.
This state is used when Nmap is unable to determine whether a port is closed or filtered. It is only used for the IP
ID idle scan.
PORT SCANNING TECHNIQUES
As a novice performing automotive repair, I can struggle for hours trying to fit my rudimentary tools (hammer, duct tape,
wrench, etc.) to the task at hand. When I fail miserably and tow my jalopy to a real mechanic, he invariably fishes
around in a huge tool chest until pulling out the perfect gizmo which makes the job seem effortless. The art of port
scanning is similar. Experts understand the dozens of scan techniques and choose the appropriate one (or combination) for
a given task. Inexperienced users and script kiddies,. on the other hand, try to solve every problem with the default
SYN scan. Since Nmap is free, the only barrier to port scanning mastery is knowledge. That certainly beats the automotive
world, where it may take great skill to determine that you need a strut spring compressor, then you still have to pay
thousands of dollars for it.
Most of the scan types are only available to privileged users.. This is because they send and receive raw packets,.
which requires root access on Unix systems. Using an administrator account on Windows is recommended, though Nmap
sometimes works for unprivileged users on that platform when WinPcap has already been loaded into the OS. Requiring root
privileges was a serious limitation when Nmap was released in 1997, as many users only had access to shared shell
accounts. Now, the world is different. Computers are cheaper, far more people have always-on direct Internet access, and
desktop Unix systems (including Linux and Mac OS X) are prevalent. A Windows version of Nmap is now available, allowing
it to run on even more desktops. For all these reasons, users have less need to run Nmap from limited shared shell
accounts. This is fortunate, as the privileged options make Nmap far more powerful and flexible.
While Nmap attempts to produce accurate results, keep in mind that all of its insights are based on packets returned by
the target machines (or firewalls in front of them). Such hosts may be untrustworthy and send responses intended to
confuse or mislead Nmap. Much more common are non-RFC-compliant hosts that do not respond as they should to Nmap probes.
FIN, NULL, and Xmas scans are particularly susceptible to this problem. Such issues are specific to certain scan types
and so are discussed in the individual scan type entries.
This section documents the dozen or so port scan techniques supported by Nmap. Only one method may be used at a time,
except that UDP scan (-sU) and any one of the SCTP scan types (-sY, -sZ) may be combined with any one of the TCP scan
types. As a memory aid, port scan type options are of the form -sC, where C is a prominent character in the scan name,
usually the first. The one exception to this is the deprecated FTP bounce scan (-b). By default, Nmap performs a SYN
Scan, though it substitutes a connect scan if the user does not have proper privileges to send raw packets (requires root
access on Unix) or if IPv6 targets were specified. Of the scans listed in this section, unprivileged users can only
execute connect and FTP bounce scans.
-sS (TCP SYN scan) .
SYN scan is the default and most popular scan option for good reasons. It can be performed quickly, scanning
thousands of ports per second on a fast network not hampered by restrictive firewalls. SYN scan is relatively
unobtrusive and stealthy, since it never completes TCP connections. It also works against any compliant TCP stack
rather than depending on idiosyncrasies of specific platforms as Nmap's FIN/NULL/Xmas, Maimon and idle scans do. It
also allows clear, reliable differentiation between the open, closed, and filtered states.
This technique is often referred to as half-open scanning, because you don't open a full TCP connection. You send a
SYN packet, as if you are going to open a real connection and then wait for a response. A SYN/ACK indicates the port
is listening (open), while a RST (reset) is indicative of a non-listener. If no response is received after several
retransmissions, the port is marked as filtered. The port is also marked filtered if an ICMP unreachable error (type
3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received.
-sT (TCP connect scan) .
TCP connect scan is the default TCP scan type when SYN scan is not an option. This is the case when a user does not
have raw packet privileges or is scanning IPv6 networks. Instead of writing raw packets as most other scan types do,
Nmap asks the underlying operating system to establish a connection with the target machine and port by issuing the
connect system call. This is the same high-level system call that web browsers, P2P clients, and most other
network-enabled applications use to establish a connection. It is part of a programming interface known as the
Berkeley Sockets API. Rather than read raw packet responses off the wire, Nmap uses this API to obtain status
information on each connection attempt.
When SYN scan is available, it is usually a better choice. Nmap has less control over the high level connect call
than with raw packets, making it less efficient. The system call completes connections to open target ports rather
than performing the half-open reset that SYN scan does. Not only does this take longer and require more packets to
obtain the same information, but target machines are more likely to log the connection. A decent IDS will catch
either, but most machines have no such alarm system. Many services on your average Unix system will add a note to
syslog, and sometimes a cryptic error message, when Nmap connects and then closes the connection without sending
data. Truly pathetic services crash when this happens, though that is uncommon. An administrator who sees a bunch of
connection attempts in her logs from a single system should know that she has been connect scanned.
-sU (UDP scans) .
While most popular services on the Internet run over the TCP protocol, UDP[6] services are widely deployed. DNS,
SNMP, and DHCP (registered ports 53, 161/162, and 67/68) are three of the most common. Because UDP scanning is
generally slower and more difficult than TCP, some security auditors ignore these ports. This is a mistake, as
exploitable UDP services are quite common and attackers certainly don't ignore the whole protocol. Fortunately, Nmap
can help inventory UDP ports.
UDP scan is activated with the -sU option. It can be combined with a TCP scan type such as SYN scan (-sS) to check
both protocols during the same run.
UDP scan works by sending a UDP packet to every targeted port. For some common ports such as 53 and 161, a
protocol-specific payload is sent, but for most ports the packet is empty.. The --data-length option can be used to
send a fixed-length random payload to every port. If an ICMP port unreachable error (type 3, code 3) is returned, the
port is closed. Other ICMP unreachable errors (type 3, codes 1, 2, 9, 10, or 13) mark the port as filtered.
Occasionally, a service will respond with a UDP packet, proving that it is open. If no response is received after
retransmissions, the port is classified as open|filtered. This means that the port could be open, or perhaps packet
filters are blocking the communication. Version detection (-sV) can be used to help differentiate the truly open
ports from the filtered ones.
A big challenge with UDP scanning is doing it quickly. Open and filtered ports rarely send any response, leaving Nmap
to time out and then conduct retransmissions just in case the probe or response were lost. Closed ports are often an
even bigger problem. They usually send back an ICMP port unreachable error. But unlike the RST packets sent by closed
TCP ports in response to a SYN or connect scan, many hosts rate limit. ICMP port unreachable messages by default.
Linux and Solaris are particularly strict about this. For example, the Linux 2.4.20 kernel limits destination
unreachable messages to one per second (in net/ipv4/icmp.c).
Nmap detects rate limiting and slows down accordingly to avoid flooding the network with useless packets that the
target machine will drop. Unfortunately, a Linux-style limit of one packet per second makes a 65,536-port scan take
more than 18 hours. Ideas for speeding your UDP scans up include scanning more hosts in parallel, doing a quick scan
of just the popular ports first, scanning from behind the firewall, and using --host-timeout to skip slow hosts.
-sY (SCTP INIT scan) .
SCTP[7] is a relatively new alternative to the TCP and UDP protocols, combining most characteristics of TCP and UDP,
and also adding new features like multi-homing and multi-streaming. It is mostly being used for SS7/SIGTRAN related
services but has the potential to be used for other applications as well. SCTP INIT scan is the SCTP equivalent of a
TCP SYN scan. It can be performed quickly, scanning thousands of ports per second on a fast network not hampered by
restrictive firewalls. Like SYN scan, INIT scan is relatively unobtrusive and stealthy, since it never completes SCTP
associations. It also allows clear, reliable differentiation between the open, closed, and filtered states.
This technique is often referred to as half-open scanning, because you don't open a full SCTP association. You send
an INIT chunk, as if you are going to open a real association and then wait for a response. An INIT-ACK chunk
indicates the port is listening (open), while an ABORT chunk is indicative of a non-listener. If no response is
received after several retransmissions, the port is marked as filtered. The port is also marked filtered if an ICMP
unreachable error (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received.
-sN; -sF; -sX (TCP NULL, FIN, and Xmas scans) .
These three scan types (even more are possible with the --scanflags option described in the next section) exploit a
subtle loophole in the TCP RFC[8] to differentiate between open and closed ports. Page 65 of RFC 793 says that "if
the [destination] port state is CLOSED .... an incoming segment not containing a RST causes a RST to be sent in
response." Then the next page discusses packets sent to open ports without the SYN, RST, or ACK bits set, stating
that: "you are unlikely to get here, but if you do, drop the segment, and return."
When scanning systems compliant with this RFC text, any packet not containing SYN, RST, or ACK bits will result in a
returned RST if the port is closed and no response at all if the port is open. As long as none of those three bits
are included, any combination of the other three (FIN, PSH, and URG) are OK. Nmap exploits this with three scan
types:
Null scan (-sN)
Does not set any bits (TCP flag header is 0)
FIN scan (-sF)
Sets just the TCP FIN bit.
Xmas scan (-sX)
Sets the FIN, PSH, and URG flags, lighting the packet up like a Christmas tree.
These three scan types are exactly the same in behavior except for the TCP flags set in probe packets. If a RST
packet is received, the port is considered closed, while no response means it is open|filtered. The port is marked
filtered if an ICMP unreachable error (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received.
The key advantage to these scan types is that they can sneak through certain non-stateful firewalls and packet
filtering routers. Another advantage is that these scan types are a little more stealthy than even a SYN scan. Don't
count on this though--most modern IDS products can be configured to detect them. The big downside is that not all
systems follow RFC 793 to the letter. A number of systems send RST responses to the probes regardless of whether the
port is open or not. This causes all of the ports to be labeled closed. Major operating systems that do this are
Microsoft Windows, many Cisco devices, BSDI, and IBM OS/400. This scan does work against most Unix-based systems
though. Another downside of these scans is that they can't distinguish open ports from certain filtered ones, leaving
you with the response open|filtered.
-sA (TCP ACK scan) .
This scan is different than the others discussed so far in that it never determines open (or even open|filtered)
ports. It is used to map out firewall rulesets, determining whether they are stateful or not and which ports are
filtered.
The ACK scan probe packet has only the ACK flag set (unless you use --scanflags). When scanning unfiltered systems,
open and closed ports will both return a RST packet. Nmap then labels them as unfiltered, meaning that they are
reachable by the ACK packet, but whether they are open or closed is undetermined. Ports that don't respond, or send
certain ICMP error messages back (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13), are labeled filtered.
-sW (TCP Window scan) .
Window scan is exactly the same as ACK scan except that it exploits an implementation detail of certain systems to
differentiate open ports from closed ones, rather than always printing unfiltered when a RST is returned. It does
this by examining the TCP Window field of the RST packets returned. On some systems, open ports use a positive window
size (even for RST packets) while closed ones have a zero window. So instead of always listing a port as unfiltered
when it receives a RST back, Window scan lists the port as open or closed if the TCP Window value in that reset is
positive or zero, respectively.
This scan relies on an implementation detail of a minority of systems out on the Internet, so you can't always trust
it. Systems that don't support it will usually return all ports closed. Of course, it is possible that the machine
really has no open ports. If most scanned ports are closed but a few common port numbers (such as 22, 25, 53) are
filtered, the system is most likely susceptible. Occasionally, systems will even show the exact opposite behavior. If
your scan shows 1000 open ports and three closed or filtered ports, then those three may very well be the truly open
ones.
-sM (TCP Maimon scan) .
The Maimon scan is named after its discoverer, Uriel Maimon.. He described the technique in Phrack Magazine issue
#49 (November 1996).. Nmap, which included this technique, was released two issues later. This technique is exactly
the same as NULL, FIN, and Xmas scans, except that the probe is FIN/ACK. According to RFC 793[8] (TCP), a RST packet
should be generated in response to such a probe whether the port is open or closed. However, Uriel noticed that many
BSD-derived systems simply drop the packet if the port is open.
--scanflags (Custom TCP scan) .
Truly advanced Nmap users need not limit themselves to the canned scan types offered. The --scanflags option allows
you to design your own scan by specifying arbitrary TCP flags.. Let your creative juices flow, while evading
intrusion detection systems. whose vendors simply paged through the Nmap man page adding specific rules!
The --scanflags argument can be a numerical flag value such as 9 (PSH and FIN), but using symbolic names is easier.
Just mash together any combination of URG, ACK, PSH, RST, SYN, and FIN. For example, --scanflags URGACKPSHRSTSYNFIN
sets everything, though it's not very useful for scanning. The order these are specified in is irrelevant.
In addition to specifying the desired flags, you can specify a TCP scan type (such as -sA or -sF). That base type
tells Nmap how to interpret responses. For example, a SYN scan considers no-response to indicate a filtered port,
while a FIN scan treats the same as open|filtered. Nmap will behave the same way it does for the base scan type,
except that it will use the TCP flags you specify instead. If you don't specify a base type, SYN scan is used.
-sZ (SCTP COOKIE ECHO scan) .
SCTP COOKIE ECHO scan is a more advanced SCTP scan. It takes advantage of the fact that SCTP implementations should
silently drop packets containing COOKIE ECHO chunks on open ports, but send an ABORT if the port is closed. The
advantage of this scan type is that it is not as obvious a port scan than an INIT scan. Also, there may be
non-stateful firewall rulesets blocking INIT chunks, but not COOKIE ECHO chunks. Don't be fooled into thinking that
this will make a port scan invisible; a good IDS will be able to detect SCTP COOKIE ECHO scans too. The downside is
that SCTP COOKIE ECHO scans cannot differentiate between open and filtered ports, leaving you with the state
open|filtered in both cases.
-sI zombie host[:probeport] (idle scan) .
This advanced scan method allows for a truly blind TCP port scan of the target (meaning no packets are sent to the
target from your real IP address). Instead, a unique side-channel attack exploits predictable IP fragmentation ID
sequence generation on the zombie host to glean information about the open ports on the target. IDS systems will
display the scan as coming from the zombie machine you specify (which must be up and meet certain criteria). This
fascinating scan type is too complex to fully describe in this reference guide, so I wrote and posted an informal
paper with full details at http://nmap.org/book/idlescan.html.
Besides being extraordinarily stealthy (due to its blind nature), this scan type permits mapping out IP-based trust
relationships between machines. The port listing shows open ports from the perspective of the zombie host. So you
can try scanning a target using various zombies that you think might be trusted. (via router/packet filter rules).
You can add a colon followed by a port number to the zombie host if you wish to probe a particular port on the zombie
for IP ID changes. Otherwise Nmap will use the port it uses by default for TCP pings (80).
-sO (IP protocol scan) .
IP protocol scan allows you to determine which IP protocols (TCP, ICMP, IGMP, etc.) are supported by target machines.
This isn't technically a port scan, since it cycles through IP protocol numbers rather than TCP or UDP port numbers.
Yet it still uses the -p option to select scanned protocol numbers, reports its results within the normal port table
format, and even uses the same underlying scan engine as the true port scanning methods. So it is close enough to a
port scan that it belongs here.
Besides being useful in its own right, protocol scan demonstrates the power of open-source software. While the
fundamental idea is pretty simple, I had not thought to add it nor received any requests for such functionality. Then
in the summer of 2000, Gerhard Rieger. conceived the idea, wrote an excellent patch implementing it, and sent it to
the nmap-hackers mailing list.. I incorporated that patch into the Nmap tree and released a new version the next
day. Few pieces of commercial software have users enthusiastic enough to design and contribute their own
improvements!
Protocol scan works in a similar fashion to UDP scan. Instead of iterating through the port number field of a UDP
packet, it sends IP packet headers and iterates through the eight-bit IP protocol field. The headers are usually
empty, containing no data and not even the proper header for the claimed protocol. The exceptions are TCP, UDP, ICMP,
SCTP, and IGMP. A proper protocol header for those is included since some systems won't send them otherwise and
because Nmap already has functions to create them. Instead of watching for ICMP port unreachable messages, protocol
scan is on the lookout for ICMP protocol unreachable messages. If Nmap receives any response in any protocol from the
target host, Nmap marks that protocol as open. An ICMP protocol unreachable error (type 3, code 2) causes the
protocol to be marked as closed Other ICMP unreachable errors (type 3, code 1, 3, 9, 10, or 13) cause the protocol to
be marked filtered (though they prove that ICMP is open at the same time). If no response is received after
retransmissions, the protocol is marked open|filtered
-b FTP relay host (FTP bounce scan) .
An interesting feature of the FTP protocol (RFC 959[9]) is support for so-called proxy FTP connections. This allows a
user to connect to one FTP server, then ask that files be sent to a third-party server. Such a feature is ripe for
abuse on many levels, so most servers have ceased supporting it. One of the abuses this feature allows is causing the
FTP server to port scan other hosts. Simply ask the FTP server to send a file to each interesting port of a target
host in turn. The error message will describe whether the port is open or not. This is a good way to bypass firewalls
because organizational FTP servers are often placed where they have more access to other internal hosts than any old
Internet host would. Nmap supports FTP bounce scan with the -b option. It takes an argument of the form
username:password@server:port. Server is the name or IP address of a vulnerable FTP server. As with a normal URL,
you may omit username:password, in which case anonymous login credentials (user: anonymous password:-wwwuser@) are
used. The port number (and preceding colon) may be omitted as well, in which case the default FTP port (21) on server
is used.
This vulnerability was widespread in 1997 when Nmap was released, but has largely been fixed. Vulnerable servers are
still around, so it is worth trying when all else fails. If bypassing a firewall is your goal, scan the target
network for open port 21 (or even for any FTP services if you scan all ports with version detection), then try a
bounce scan using each. Nmap will tell you whether the host is vulnerable or not. If you are just trying to cover
your tracks, you don't need to (and, in fact, shouldn't) limit yourself to hosts on the target network. Before you go
scanning random Internet addresses for vulnerable FTP servers, consider that sysadmins may not appreciate you abusing
their servers in this way.
PORT SPECIFICATION AND SCAN ORDER
In addition to all of the scan methods discussed previously, Nmap offers options for specifying which ports are scanned
and whether the scan order is randomized or sequential. By default, Nmap scans the most common 1,000 ports for each
protocol.
-p port ranges (Only scan specified ports) .
This option specifies which ports you want to scan and overrides the default. Individual port numbers are OK, as are
ranges separated by a hyphen (e.g. 1-1023). The beginning and/or end values of a range may be omitted, causing Nmap
to use 1 and 65535, respectively. So you can specify -p- to scan ports from 1 through 65535. Scanning port zero. is
allowed if you specify it explicitly. For IP protocol scanning (-sO), this option specifies the protocol numbers you
wish to scan for (0-255).
When scanning both TCP and UDP ports, you can specify a particular protocol by preceding the port numbers by T: or
U:. The qualifier lasts until you specify another qualifier. For example, the argument -p
U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080 would scan UDP ports 53, 111,and 137, as well as the listed TCP ports. Note that to
scan both UDP and TCP, you have to specify -sU and at least one TCP scan type (such as -sS, -sF, or -sT). If no
protocol qualifier is given, the port numbers are added to all protocol lists. Ports can also be specified by name
according to what the port is referred to in the nmap-services. You can even use the wildcards * and ? with the
names. For example, to scan FTP and all ports whose names begin with "http", use -p ftp,http*. Be careful about shell
expansions and quote the argument to -p if unsure.
Ranges of ports can be surrounded by square brackets to indicate ports inside that range that appear in
nmap-services. For example, the following will scan all ports in nmap-services equal to or below 1024: -p [-1024]. Be
careful with shell expansions and quote the argument to -p if unsure.
-F (Fast (limited port) scan) .
Specifies that you wish to scan fewer ports than the default. Normally Nmap scans the most common 1,000 ports for
each scanned protocol. With -F, this is reduced to 100.
Nmap needs an nmap-services file with frequency information in order to know which ports are the most common. If port
frequency information isn't available, perhaps because of the use of a custom nmap-services file, -F means to scan
only ports that are named in the services file (normally Nmap scans all named ports plus ports 1-1024).
-r (Don't randomize ports) .
By default, Nmap randomizes the scanned port order (except that certain commonly accessible ports are moved near the
beginning for efficiency reasons). This randomization is normally desirable, but you can specify -r for sequential
(sorted from lowest to highest) port scanning instead.
--port-ratio <decimal number between 0 and 1>
Scans all ports in nmap-services file with a ratio greater than the number specified as the argument.
--top-ports <integer of 1 or greater>
Scans the N highest-ratio ports found in nmap-services file.
SERVICE AND VERSION DETECTION
Point Nmap at a remote machine and it might tell you that ports 25/tcp, 80/tcp, and 53/udp are open. Using its
nmap-services. database of about 2,200 well-known services,. Nmap would report that those ports probably correspond to
a mail server (SMTP), web server (HTTP), and name server (DNS) respectively. This lookup is usually accurate--the vast
majority of daemons listening on TCP port 25 are, in fact, mail servers. However, you should not bet your security on
this! People can and do run services on strange ports..
Even if Nmap is right, and the hypothetical server above is running SMTP, HTTP, and DNS servers, that is not a lot of
information. When doing vulnerability assessments (or even simple network inventories) of your companies or clients, you
really want to know which mail and DNS servers and versions are running. Having an accurate version number helps
dramatically in determining which exploits a server is vulnerable to. Version detection helps you obtain this
information.
After TCP and/or UDP ports are discovered using one of the other scan methods, version detection interrogates those ports
to determine more about what is actually running. The nmap-service-probes. database contains probes for querying various
services and match expressions to recognize and parse responses. Nmap tries to determine the service protocol (e.g. FTP,
SSH, Telnet, HTTP), the application name (e.g. ISC BIND, Apache httpd, Solaris telnetd), the version number, hostname,
device type (e.g. printer, router), the OS family (e.g. Windows, Linux) and sometimes miscellaneous details like whether
an X server is open to connections, the SSH protocol version, or the KaZaA user name). Of course, most services don't
provide all of this information. If Nmap was compiled with OpenSSL support, it will connect to SSL servers to deduce the
service listening behind that encryption layer.. When RPC services are discovered, the Nmap RPC grinder. (-sR). is
automatically used to determine the RPC program and version numbers. Some UDP ports are left in the open|filtered state
after a UDP port scan is unable to determine whether the port is open or filtered. Version detection will try to elicit a
response from these ports (just as it does with open ports), and change the state to open if it succeeds. open|filtered
TCP ports are treated the same way. Note that the Nmap -A option enables version detection among other things. A paper
documenting the workings, usage, and customization of version detection is available at http://nmap.org/book/vscan.html.
When Nmap receives responses from a service but cannot match them to its database, it prints out a special fingerprint
and a URL for you to submit if to if you know for sure what is running on the port. Please take a couple minutes to make
the submission so that your find can benefit everyone. Thanks to these submissions, Nmap has about 3,000 pattern matches
for more than 350 protocols such as SMTP, FTP, HTTP, etc..
Version detection is enabled and controlled with the following options:
-sV (Version detection) .
Enables version detection, as discussed above. Alternatively, you can use -A, which enables version detection among
other things.
--allports (Don't exclude any ports from version detection) .
By default, Nmap version detection skips TCP port 9100 because some printers simply print anything sent to that port,
leading to dozens of pages of HTTP GET requests, binary SSL session requests, etc. This behavior can be changed by
modifying or removing the Exclude directive in nmap-service-probes, or you can specify --allports to scan all ports
regardless of any Exclude directive.
--version-intensity intensity (Set version scan intensity) .
When performing a version scan (-sV), Nmap sends a series of probes, each of which is assigned a rarity value between
one and nine. The lower-numbered probes are effective against a wide variety of common services, while the higher
numbered ones are rarely useful. The intensity level specifies which probes should be applied. The higher the number,
the more likely it is the service will be correctly identified. However, high intensity scans take longer. The
intensity must be between 0 and 9. The default is 7. When a probe is registered to the target port via the
nmap-service-probes ports directive, that probe is tried regardless of intensity level. This ensures that the DNS
probes will always be attempted against any open port 53, the SSL probe will be done against 443, etc.
--version-light (Enable light mode) .
This is a convenience alias for --version-intensity 2. This light mode makes version scanning much faster, but it is
slightly less likely to identify services.
--version-all (Try every single probe) .
An alias for --version-intensity 9, ensuring that every single probe is attempted against each port.
--version-trace (Trace version scan activity) .
This causes Nmap to print out extensive debugging info about what version scanning is doing. It is a subset of what
you get with --packet-trace.
-sR (RPC scan) .
This method works in conjunction with the various port scan methods of Nmap. It takes all the TCP/UDP ports found
open and floods them with SunRPC program NULL commands in an attempt to determine whether they are RPC ports, and if
so, what program and version number they serve up. Thus you can effectively obtain the same info as rpcinfo -p even
if the target's portmapper is behind a firewall (or protected by TCP wrappers). Decoys do not currently work with RPC
scan.. This is automatically enabled as part of version scan (-sV) if you request that. As version detection
includes this and is much more comprehensive, -sR is rarely needed.
OS DETECTION
One of Nmap's best-known features is remote OS detection using TCP/IP stack fingerprinting. Nmap sends a series of TCP
and UDP packets to the remote host and examines practically every bit in the responses. After performing dozens of tests
such as TCP ISN sampling, TCP options support and ordering, IP ID sampling, and the initial window size check, Nmap
compares the results to its nmap-os-db. database of more than a thousand known OS fingerprints and prints out the OS
details if there is a match. Each fingerprint includes a freeform textual description of the OS, and a classification
which provides the vendor name (e.g. Sun), underlying OS (e.g. Solaris), OS generation (e.g. 10), and device type
(general purpose, router, switch, game console, etc).
If Nmap is unable to guess the OS of a machine, and conditions are good (e.g. at least one open port and one closed port
were found), Nmap will provide a URL you can use to submit the fingerprint if you know (for sure) the OS running on the
machine. By doing this you contribute to the pool of operating systems known to Nmap and thus it will be more accurate
for everyone.
OS detection enables some other tests which make use of information that is gathered during the process anyway. One of
these is TCP Sequence Predictability Classification. This measures approximately how hard it is to establish a forged TCP
connection against the remote host. It is useful for exploiting source-IP based trust relationships (rlogin, firewall
filters, etc) or for hiding the source of an attack. This sort of spoofing is rarely performed any more, but many
machines are still vulnerable to it. The actual difficulty number is based on statistical sampling and may fluctuate. It
is generally better to use the English classification such as "worthy challenge" or "trivial joke". This is only reported
in normal output in verbose (-v) mode. When verbose mode is enabled along with -O, IP ID sequence generation is also
reported. Most machines are in the "incremental" class, which means that they increment the ID field in the IP header for
each packet they send. This makes them vulnerable to several advanced information gathering and spoofing attacks.
Another bit of extra information enabled by OS detection is a guess at a target's uptime. This uses the TCP timestamp
option (RFC 1323[10]) to guess when a machine was last rebooted. The guess can be inaccurate due to the timestamp counter
not being initialized to zero or the counter overflowing and wrapping around, so it is printed only in verbose mode.
A paper documenting the workings, usage, and customization of OS detection is available at
http://nmap.org/book/osdetect.html.
OS detection is enabled and controlled with the following options:
-O (Enable OS detection) .
Enables OS detection, as discussed above. Alternatively, you can use -A to enable OS detection along with other
things.
--osscan-limit (Limit OS detection to promising targets) .
OS detection is far more effective if at least one open and one closed TCP port are found. Set this option and Nmap
will not even try OS detection against hosts that do not meet this criteria. This can save substantial time,
particularly on -PN scans against many hosts. It only matters when OS detection is requested with -O or -A.
--osscan-guess; --fuzzy (Guess OS detection results) .
When Nmap is unable to detect a perfect OS match, it sometimes offers up near-matches as possibilities. The match has
to be very close for Nmap to do this by default. Either of these (equivalent) options make Nmap guess more
aggressively. Nmap will still tell you when an imperfect match is printed and display its confidence level
(percentage) for each guess.
--max-os-tries (Set the maximum number of OS detection tries against a target) .
When Nmap performs OS detection against a target and fails to find a perfect match, it usually repeats the attempt.
By default, Nmap tries five times if conditions are favorable for OS fingerprint submission, and twice when
conditions aren't so good. Specifying a lower --max-os-tries value (such as 1) speeds Nmap up, though you miss out on
retries which could potentially identify the OS. Alternatively, a high value may be set to allow even more retries
when conditions are favorable. This is rarely done, except to generate better fingerprints for submission and
integration into the Nmap OS database.
NMAP SCRIPTING ENGINE (NSE)
The Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) is one of Nmap's most powerful and flexible features. It allows users to write (and
share) simple scripts (using the Lua programming language[11],
Tasks we had in mind when creating the system include network discovery, more sophisticated version detection,
vulnerability detection. NSE can even be used for vulnerability exploitation.
To reflect those different uses and to simplify the choice of which scripts to run, each script contains a field
associating it with one or more categories. Currently defined categories are safe, intrusive, malware, version,
discovery, vuln, auth, and default. These are all described at http://nmap.org/book/nse-usage.html#nse-categories.
Scripts are not run in a sandbox and thus could accidentally or maliciously damage your system or invade your privacy.
Never run scripts from third parties unless you trust the authors or have carefully audited the scripts yourself.
The Nmap Scripting Engine is described in detail at http://nmap.org/book/nse.html
and is controlled by the following options:
-sC .
Performs a script scan using the default set of scripts. It is equivalent to --script=default. Some of the scripts in
this category are considered intrusive and should not be run against a target network without permission.
--script filename|category|directory|expression|all[,...] .
Runs a script scan using the comma-separated list of filenames, script categories, and directories. Each element in
the list may also be a Boolean expression describing a more complex set of scripts. Each element is interpreted first
as an expression, then as a category, and finally as a file or directory name. The special argument all makes every
script in Nmap's script database eligible to run. The all argument should be used with caution as NSE may contain
dangerous scripts including exploits, brute force authentication crackers, and denial of service attacks.
File and directory names may be relative or absolute. Absolute names are used directly. Relative paths are looked for
in the following places until found:
--datadir
$NMAPDIR
~/.nmap (not searched on Windows)
NMAPDATADIR
the current directory
A scripts subdirectory is also tried in each of these.
When a directory name is given, Nmap loads every file in the directory whose name ends with .nse. All other files are
ignored and directories are not searched recursively. When a filename is given, it does not have to have the .nse
extension; it will be added automatically if necessary. Nmap scripts are stored in a scripts subdirectory of the
Nmap data directory by default (see http://nmap.org/book/data-files.html).
For efficiency, scripts are indexed in a database stored in scripts/script.db,. which lists the category or
categories in which each script belongs. When referring to scripts from script.db by name, you can use a shell-style
`*' wildcard.
nmap --script "http-*"
Loads all scripts whose name starts with http-, such as http-auth.nse and http-open-proxy.nse. The argument to
--script had to be in quotes to protect the wildcard from the shell.
More complicated script selection can be done using the and, or, and not operators to build Boolean expressions. The
operators have the same precedence[12] as in Lua: not is the highest, followed by and and then or. You can alter
precedence by using parentheses. Because expressions contain space characters it is necessary to quote them.
nmap --script "not intrusive"
Loads every script except for those in the intrusive category.
nmap --script "default or safe"
This is functionally equivalent to nmap --script "default,safe". It loads all scripts that are in the default
category or the safe category or both.
nmap --script "default and safe"
Loads those scripts that are in both the default and safe categories.
nmap --script "(default or safe or intrusive) and not http-*"
Loads scripts in the default, safe, or intrusive categories, except for those whose names start with http-.
--script-args name1=value1,name2={name3=value3},name4={value4,value5} .
Lets you provide arguments to NSE scripts. Arguments are a comma-separated list of name=value pairs. Names and values
may be strings not containing whitespace or the characters `{', `}', `=', or `,'. To include one of these characters
in a string, enclose the string in single or double quotes. Within a quoted string, `\' escapes a quote. A backslash
is only used to escape quotation marks in this special case; in all other cases a backslash is interpreted literally.
Values may also be tables enclosed in {}, just as in Lua. A table may contain simple string values or more name-value
pairs, including nested tables. An example of script arguments: --script-args
auth={user=foo,pass=',{}=bar'},userdb=C:\Path\To\File. The online NSE Documentation Portal at http://nmap.org/nsedoc/
lists the arguments that each script accepts.
--script-trace .
This option does what --packet-trace does, just one ISO layer higher. If this option is specified all incoming and
outgoing communication performed by a script is printed. The displayed information includes the communication
protocol, the source, the target and the transmitted data. If more than 5% of all transmitted data is not printable,
then the trace output is in a hex dump format. Specifying --packet-trace enables script tracing too.
--script-updatedb .
This option updates the script database found in scripts/script.db which is used by Nmap to determine the available
default scripts and categories. It is only necessary to update the database if you have added or removed NSE scripts
from the default scripts directory or if you have changed the categories of any script. This option is generally used
by itself: nmap --script-updatedb.
TIMING AND PERFORMANCE
One of my highest Nmap development priorities has always been performance. A default scan (nmap hostname) of a host on my
local network takes a fifth of a second. That is barely enough time to blink, but adds up when you are scanning hundreds
or thousands of hosts. Moreover, certain scan options such as UDP scanning and version detection can increase scan times
substantially. So can certain firewall configurations, particularly response rate limiting. While Nmap utilizes
parallelism and many advanced algorithms to accelerate these scans, the user has ultimate control over how Nmap runs.
Expert users carefully craft Nmap commands to obtain only the information they care about while meeting their time
constraints.
Techniques for improving scan times include omitting non-critical tests, and upgrading to the latest version of Nmap
(performance enhancements are made frequently). Optimizing timing parameters can also make a substantial difference.
Those options are listed below.
Some options accept a time parameter. This is specified in milliseconds by default, though you can append `s', `m', or
`h' to the value to specify seconds, minutes, or hours. So the --host-timeout arguments 900000, 900s, and 15m all do the
same thing.
--min-hostgroup numhosts; --max-hostgroup numhosts (Adjust parallel scan group sizes) .
Nmap has the ability to port scan or version scan multiple hosts in parallel. Nmap does this by dividing the target
IP space into groups and then scanning one group at a time. In general, larger groups are more efficient. The
downside is that host results can't be provided until the whole group is finished. So if Nmap started out with a
group size of 50, the user would not receive any reports (except for the updates offered in verbose mode) until the
first 50 hosts are completed.
By default, Nmap takes a compromise approach to this conflict. It starts out with a group size as low as five so the
first results come quickly and then increases the groupsize to as high as 1024. The exact default numbers depend on
the options given. For efficiency reasons, Nmap uses larger group sizes for UDP or few-port TCP scans.
When a maximum group size is specified with --max-hostgroup, Nmap will never exceed that size. Specify a minimum size
with --min-hostgroup and Nmap will try to keep group sizes above that level. Nmap may have to use smaller groups than
you specify if there are not enough target hosts left on a given interface to fulfill the specified minimum. Both may
be set to keep the group size within a specific range, though this is rarely desired.
These options do not have an effect during the host discovery phase of a scan. This includes plain ping scans (-sP).
Host discovery always works in large groups of hosts to improve speed and accuracy.
The primary use of these options is to specify a large minimum group size so that the full scan runs more quickly. A
common choice is 256 to scan a network in Class C sized chunks. For a scan with many ports, exceeding that number is
unlikely to help much. For scans of just a few port numbers, host group sizes of 2048 or more may be helpful.
--min-parallelism numprobes; --max-parallelism numprobes (Adjust probe parallelization) .
These options control the total number of probes that may be outstanding for a host group. They are used for port
scanning and host discovery. By default, Nmap calculates an ever-changing ideal parallelism based on network
performance. If packets are being dropped, Nmap slows down and allows fewer outstanding probes. The ideal probe
number slowly rises as the network proves itself worthy. These options place minimum or maximum bounds on that
variable. By default, the ideal parallelism can drop to one if the network proves unreliable and rise to several
hundred in perfect conditions.
The most common usage is to set --min-parallelism to a number higher than one to speed up scans of poorly performing
hosts or networks. This is a risky option to play with, as setting it too high may affect accuracy. Setting this also
reduces Nmap's ability to control parallelism dynamically based on network conditions. A value of ten might be
reasonable, though I only adjust this value as a last resort.
The --max-parallelism option is sometimes set to one to prevent Nmap from sending more than one probe at a time to
hosts. The --scan-delay option, discussed later, is another way to do this.
--min-rtt-timeout time, --max-rtt-timeout time, --initial-rtt-timeout time (Adjust probe timeouts) .
Nmap maintains a running timeout value for determining how long it will wait for a probe response before giving up or
retransmitting the probe. This is calculated based on the response times of previous probes.
If the network latency shows itself to be significant and variable, this timeout can grow to several seconds. It also
starts at a conservative (high) level and may stay that way for a while when Nmap scans unresponsive hosts.
Specifying a lower --max-rtt-timeout and --initial-rtt-timeout than the defaults can cut scan times significantly.
This is particularly true for pingless (-PN) scans, and those against heavily filtered networks. Don't get too
aggressive though. The scan can end up taking longer if you specify such a low value that many probes are timing out
and retransmitting while the response is in transit.
If all the hosts are on a local network, 100 milliseconds is a reasonable aggressive --max-rtt-timeout value. If
routing is involved, ping a host on the network first with the ICMP ping utility, or with a custom packet crafter
such as hping2. that is more likely to get through a firewall. Look at the maximum round trip time out of ten
packets or so. You might want to double that for the --initial-rtt-timeout and triple or quadruple it for the
--max-rtt-timeout. I generally do not set the maximum RTT below 100 ms, no matter what the ping times are. Nor do I
exceed 1000 ms.
--min-rtt-timeout is a rarely used option that could be useful when a network is so unreliable that even Nmap's
default is too aggressive. Since Nmap only reduces the timeout down to the minimum when the network seems to be
reliable, this need is unusual and should be reported as a bug to the nmap-dev mailing list..
--max-retries numtries (Specify the maximum number of port scan probe retransmissions) .
When Nmap receives no response to a port scan probe, it could mean the port is filtered. Or maybe the probe or
response was simply lost on the network. It is also possible that the target host has rate limiting enabled that
temporarily blocked the response. So Nmap tries again by retransmitting the initial probe. If Nmap detects poor
network reliability, it may try many more times before giving up on a port. While this benefits accuracy, it also
lengthen scan times. When performance is critical, scans may be sped up by limiting the number of retransmissions
allowed. You can even specify --max-retries 0 to prevent any retransmissions, though that is only recommended for
situations such as informal surveys where occasional missed ports and hosts are acceptable.
The default (with no -T template) is to allow ten retransmissions. If a network seems reliable and the target hosts
aren't rate limiting, Nmap usually only does one retransmission. So most target scans aren't even affected by
dropping --max-retries to a low value such as three. Such values can substantially speed scans of slow (rate limited)
hosts. You usually lose some information when Nmap gives up on ports early, though that may be preferable to letting
the --host-timeout expire and losing all information about the target.
--host-timeout time (Give up on slow target hosts) .
Some hosts simply take a long time to scan. This may be due to poorly performing or unreliable networking hardware or
software, packet rate limiting, or a restrictive firewall. The slowest few percent of the scanned hosts can eat up a
majority of the scan time. Sometimes it is best to cut your losses and skip those hosts initially. Specify
--host-timeout with the maximum amount of time you are willing to wait. For example, specify 30m to ensure that Nmap
doesn't waste more than half an hour on a single host. Note that Nmap may be scanning other hosts at the same time
during that half an hour, so it isn't a complete loss. A host that times out is skipped. No port table, OS detection,
or version detection results are printed for that host.
--scan-delay time; --max-scan-delay time (Adjust delay between probes) .
This option causes Nmap to wait at least the given amount of time between each probe it sends to a given host. This
is particularly useful in the case of rate limiting.. Solaris machines (among many others) will usually respond to
UDP scan probe packets with only one ICMP message per second. Any more than that sent by Nmap will be wasteful. A
--scan-delay of 1s will keep Nmap at that slow rate. Nmap tries to detect rate limiting and adjust the scan delay
accordingly, but it doesn't hurt to specify it explicitly if you already know what rate works best.
When Nmap adjusts the scan delay upward to cope with rate limiting, the scan slows down dramatically. The
--max-scan-delay option specifies the largest delay that Nmap will allow. A low --max-scan-delay can speed up Nmap,
but it is risky. Setting this value too low can lead to wasteful packet retransmissions and possible missed ports
when the target implements strict rate limiting.
Another use of --scan-delay is to evade threshold based intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS)..
--min-rate number; --max-rate number (Directly control the scanning rate) .
Nmap's dynamic timing does a good job of finding an appropriate speed at which to scan. Sometimes, however, you may
happen to know an appropriate scanning rate for a network, or you may have to guarantee that a scan will be finished
by a certain time. Or perhaps you must keep Nmap from scanning too quickly. The --min-rate and --max-rate options are
designed for these situations.
When the --min-rate option is given Nmap will do its best to send packets as fast as or faster than the given rate.
The argument is a positive real number representing a packet rate in packets per second. For example, specifying
--min-rate 300 means that Nmap will try to keep the sending rate at or above 300 packets per second. Specifying a
minimum rate does not keep Nmap from going faster if conditions warrant.
Likewise, --max-rate limits a scan's sending rate to a given maximum. Use --max-rate 100, for example, to limit
sending to 100 packets per second on a fast network. Use --max-rate 0.1 for a slow scan of one packet every ten
seconds. Use --min-rate and --max-rate together to keep the rate inside a certain range.
These two options are global, affecting an entire scan, not individual hosts. They only affect port scans and host
discovery scans. Other features like OS detection implement their own timing.
There are two conditions when the actual scanning rate may fall below the requested minimum. The first is if the
minimum is faster than the fastest rate at which Nmap can send, which is dependent on hardware. In this case Nmap
will simply send packets as fast as possible, but be aware that such high rates are likely to cause a loss of
accuracy. The second case is when Nmap has nothing to send, for example at the end of a scan when the last probes
have been sent and Nmap is waiting for them to time out or be responded to. It's normal to see the scanning rate drop
at the end of a scan or in between hostgroups. The sending rate may temporarily exceed the maximum to make up for
unpredictable delays, but on average the rate will stay at or below the maximum.
Specifying a minimum rate should be done with care. Scanning faster than a network can support may lead to a loss of
accuracy. In some cases, using a faster rate can make a scan take longer than it would with a slower rate. This is
because Nmap's
adaptive retransmission algorithms will detect the network congestion caused by an excessive scanning rate and
increase the number of retransmissions in order to improve accuracy. So even though packets are sent at a higher
rate, more packets are sent overall. Cap the number of retransmissions with the --max-retries option if you need to
set an upper limit on total scan time.
--defeat-rst-ratelimit .
Many hosts have long used rate limiting. to reduce the number of ICMP error messages (such as port-unreachable
errors) they send. Some systems now apply similar rate limits to the RST (reset) packets they generate. This can slow
Nmap down dramatically as it adjusts its timing to reflect those rate limits. You can tell Nmap to ignore those rate
limits (for port scans such as SYN scan which don't treat non-responsive ports as open) by specifying
--defeat-rst-ratelimit.
Using this option can reduce accuracy, as some ports will appear non-responsive because Nmap didn't wait long enough
for a rate-limited RST response. With a SYN scan, the non-response results in the port being labeled filtered rather
than the closed state we see when RST packets are received. This option is useful when you only care about open
ports, and distinguishing between closed and filtered ports isn't worth the extra time.
-T paranoid|sneaky|polite|normal|aggressive|insane (Set a timing template) .
While the fine-grained timing controls discussed in the previous section are powerful and effective, some people find
them confusing. Moreover, choosing the appropriate values can sometimes take more time than the scan you are trying
to optimize. So Nmap offers a simpler approach, with six timing templates. You can specify them with the -T option
and their number (0-5) or their name. The template names are paranoid (0), sneaky (1), polite (2), normal (3),
aggressive (4), and insane (5). The first two are for IDS evasion. Polite mode slows down the scan to use less
bandwidth and target machine resources. Normal mode is the default and so -T3 does nothing. Aggressive mode speeds
scans up by making the assumption that you are on a reasonably fast and reliable network. Finally insane mode.
assumes that you are on an extraordinarily fast network or are willing to sacrifice some accuracy for speed.
These templates allow the user to specify how aggressive they wish to be, while leaving Nmap to pick the exact timing
values. The templates also make some minor speed adjustments for which fine-grained control options do not currently
exist. For example, -T4. prohibits the dynamic scan delay from exceeding 10 ms for TCP ports and -T5 caps that value
at 5 ms. Templates can be used in combination with fine-grained controls, and the fine-grained controls will you
specify will take precedence over the timing template default for that parameter. I recommend using -T4 when scanning
reasonably modern and reliable networks. Keep that option even when you add fine-grained controls so that you benefit
from those extra minor optimizations that it enables.
If you are on a decent broadband or ethernet connection, I would recommend always using -T4. Some people love -T5
though it is too aggressive for my taste. People sometimes specify -T2 because they think it is less likely to crash
hosts or because they consider themselves to be polite in general. They often don't realize just how slow -T polite.
really is. Their scan may take ten times longer than a default scan. Machine crashes and bandwidth problems are rare
with the default timing options (-T3) and so I normally recommend that for cautious scanners. Omitting version
detection is far more effective than playing with timing values at reducing these problems.
While -T0. and -T1. may be useful for avoiding IDS alerts, they will take an extraordinarily long time to scan
thousands of machines or ports. For such a long scan, you may prefer to set the exact timing values you need rather
than rely on the canned -T0 and -T1 values.
The main effects of T0 are serializing the scan so only one port is scanned at a time, and waiting five minutes
between sending each probe. T1 and T2 are similar but they only wait 15 seconds and 0.4 seconds, respectively,
between probes. T3 is Nmap's default behavior, which includes parallelization.. -T4 does the equivalent of
--max-rtt-timeout 1250 --initial-rtt-timeout 500 --max-retries 6 and sets the maximum TCP scan delay to 10
milliseconds. T5 does the equivalent of --max-rtt-timeout 300 --min-rtt-timeout 50 --initial-rtt-timeout 250
--max-retries 2 --host-timeout 15m as well as setting the maximum TCP scan delay to 5 ms.
FIREWALL/IDS EVASION AND SPOOFING
Many Internet pioneers envisioned a global open network with a universal IP address space allowing virtual connections
between any two nodes. This allows hosts to act as true peers, serving and retrieving information from each other. People
could access all of their home systems from work, changing the climate control settings or unlocking the doors for early
guests. This vision of universal connectivity has been stifled by address space shortages and security concerns. In the
early 1990s, organizations began deploying firewalls for the express purpose of reducing connectivity. Huge networks were
cordoned off from the unfiltered Internet by application proxies, network address translation, and packet filters. The
unrestricted flow of information gave way to tight regulation of approved communication channels and the content that
passes over them.
Network obstructions such as firewalls can make mapping a network exceedingly difficult. It will not get any easier, as
stifling casual reconnaissance is often a key goal of implementing the devices. Nevertheless, Nmap offers many features
to help understand these complex networks, and to verify that filters are working as intended. It even supports
mechanisms for bypassing poorly implemented defenses. One of the best methods of understanding your network security
posture is to try to defeat it. Place yourself in the mind-set of an attacker, and deploy techniques from this section
against your networks. Launch an FTP bounce scan, idle scan, fragmentation attack, or try to tunnel through one of your
own proxies.
In addition to restricting network activity, companies are increasingly monitoring traffic with intrusion detection
systems (IDS). All of the major IDSs ship with rules designed to detect Nmap scans because scans are sometimes a
precursor to attacks. Many of these products have recently morphed into intrusion prevention systems (IPS). that
actively block traffic deemed malicious. Unfortunately for network administrators and IDS vendors, reliably detecting bad
intentions by analyzing packet data is a tough problem. Attackers with patience, skill, and the help of certain Nmap
options can usually pass by IDSs undetected. Meanwhile, administrators must cope with large numbers of false positive
results where innocent activity is misdiagnosed and alerted on or blocked.
Occasionally people suggest that Nmap should not offer features for evading firewall rules or sneaking past IDSs. They
argue that these features are just as likely to be misused by attackers as used by administrators to enhance security.
The problem with this logic is that these methods would still be used by attackers, who would just find other tools or
patch the functionality into Nmap. Meanwhile, administrators would find it that much harder to do their jobs. Deploying
only modern, patched FTP servers is a far more powerful defense than trying to prevent the distribution of tools
implementing the FTP bounce attack.
There is no magic bullet (or Nmap option) for detecting and subverting firewalls and IDS systems. It takes skill and
experience. A tutorial is beyond the scope of this reference guide, which only lists the relevant options and describes
what they do.
-f (fragment packets); --mtu (using the specified MTU) .
The -f option causes the requested scan (including ping scans) to use tiny fragmented IP packets. The idea is to
split up the TCP header over several packets to make it harder for packet filters, intrusion detection systems, and
other annoyances to detect what you are doing. Be careful with this! Some programs have trouble handling these tiny
packets. The old-school sniffer named Sniffit segmentation faulted immediately upon receiving the first fragment.
Specify this option once, and Nmap splits the packets into eight bytes or less after the IP header. So a 20-byte TCP
header would be split into three packets. Two with eight bytes of the TCP header, and one with the final four. Of
course each fragment also has an IP header. Specify -f again to use 16 bytes per fragment (reducing the number of
fragments).. Or you can specify your own offset size with the --mtu option. Don't also specify -f if you use --mtu.
The offset must be a multiple of eight. While fragmented packets won't get by packet filters and firewalls that queue
all IP fragments, such as the CONFIG_IP_ALWAYS_DEFRAG option in the Linux kernel, some networks can't afford the
performance hit this causes and thus leave it disabled. Others can't enable this because fragments may take different
routes into their networks. Some source systems defragment outgoing packets in the kernel. Linux with the iptables.
connection tracking module is one such example. Do a scan while a sniffer such as Wireshark. is running to ensure
that sent packets are fragmented. If your host OS is causing problems, try the --send-eth. option to bypass the IP
layer and send raw ethernet frames.
Fragmentation is only supported for Nmap's raw packet features, which includes TCP and UDP port scans (except connect
scan and FTP bounce scan) and OS detection. Features such as version detection and the Nmap Scripting Engine
generally don't support fragmentation because they rely on your host's TCP stack to communicate with target services.
-D decoy1[,decoy2][,ME][,...] (Cloak a scan with decoys) .
Causes a decoy scan to be performed, which makes it appear to the remote host that the host(s) you specify as decoys
are scanning the target network too. Thus their IDS might report 5-10 port scans from unique IP addresses, but they
won't know which IP was scanning them and which were innocent decoys. While this can be defeated through router path
tracing, response-dropping, and other active mechanisms, it is generally an effective technique for hiding your IP
address.
Separate each decoy host with commas, and you can optionally use ME. as one of the decoys to represent the position
for your real IP address. If you put ME in the sixth position or later, some common port scan detectors (such as
Solar Designer's. excellent Scanlogd). are unlikely to show your IP address at all. If you don't use ME, Nmap will
put you in a random position. You can also use RND. to generate a random, non-reserved IP address, or RND:number to
generate number addresses.
Note that the hosts you use as decoys should be up or you might accidentally SYN flood your targets. Also it will be
pretty easy to determine which host is scanning if only one is actually up on the network. You might want to use IP
addresses instead of names (so the decoy networks don't see you in their nameserver logs).
Decoys are used both in the initial ping scan (using ICMP, SYN, ACK, or whatever) and during the actual port scanning
phase. Decoys are also used during remote OS detection (-O). Decoys do not work with version detection or TCP connect
scan. When a scan delay is in effect, the delay is enforced between each batch of spoofed probes, not between each
individual probe. Because decoys are sent as a batch all at once, they may temporarily violate congestion control
limits.
It is worth noting that using too many decoys may slow your scan and potentially even make it less accurate. Also,
some ISPs will filter out your spoofed packets, but many do not restrict spoofed IP packets at all.
-S IP_Address (Spoof source address) .
In some circumstances, Nmap may not be able to determine your source address (Nmap will tell you if this is the
case). In this situation, use -S with the IP address of the interface you wish to send packets through.
Another possible use of this flag is to spoof the scan to make the targets think that someone else is scanning them.
Imagine a company being repeatedly port scanned by a competitor! The -e option and -PN are generally required for
this sort of usage. Note that you usually won't receive reply packets back (they will be addressed to the IP you are
spoofing), so Nmap won't produce useful reports.
-e interface (Use specified interface) .
Tells Nmap what interface to send and receive packets on. Nmap should be able to detect this automatically, but it
will tell you if it cannot.
--source-port portnumber; -g portnumber (Spoof source port number) .
One surprisingly common misconfiguration is to trust traffic based only on the source port number. It is easy to
understand how this comes about. An administrator will set up a shiny new firewall, only to be flooded with complains
from ungrateful users whose applications stopped working. In particular, DNS may be broken because the UDP DNS
replies from external servers can no longer enter the network. FTP is another common example. In active FTP
transfers, the remote server tries to establish a connection back to the client to transfer the requested file.
Secure solutions to these problems exist, often in the form of application-level proxies or protocol-parsing firewall
modules. Unfortunately there are also easier, insecure solutions. Noting that DNS replies come from port 53 and
active FTP from port 20, many administrators have fallen into the trap of simply allowing incoming traffic from those
ports. They often assume that no attacker would notice and exploit such firewall holes. In other cases,
administrators consider this a short-term stop-gap measure until they can implement a more secure solution. Then they
forget the security upgrade.
Overworked network administrators are not the only ones to fall into this trap. Numerous products have shipped with
these insecure rules. Even Microsoft has been guilty. The IPsec filters that shipped with Windows 2000 and Windows XP
contain an implicit rule that allows all TCP or UDP traffic from port 88 (Kerberos). In another well-known case,
versions of the Zone Alarm personal firewall up to 2.1.25 allowed any incoming UDP packets with the source port 53
(DNS) or 67 (DHCP).
Nmap offers the -g and --source-port options (they are equivalent) to exploit these weaknesses. Simply provide a port
number and Nmap will send packets from that port where possible. Nmap must use different port numbers for certain OS
detection tests to work properly, and DNS requests ignore the --source-port flag because Nmap relies on system
libraries to handle those. Most TCP scans, including SYN scan, support the option completely, as does UDP scan.
--data-length number (Append random data to sent packets) .
Normally Nmap sends minimalist packets containing only a header. So its TCP packets are generally 40 bytes and ICMP
echo requests are just 28. Some UDP ports. and IP protocols. get a custom payload by default. This option tells
Nmap to append the given number of random bytes to most of the packets it sends, and not to use any protocol-specific
payloads. (Use --data-length 0 for no random or protocol-specific payloads.. OS detection (-O) packets are not
affected. because accuracy there requires probe consistency, but most pinging and portscan packets support this. It
slows things down a little, but can make a scan slightly less conspicuous.
--ip-options S|R [route]|L [route]|T|U ... ; --ip-options hex string (Send packets with specified ip options) .
The IP protocol[13] offers several options which may be placed in packet headers. Unlike the ubiquitous TCP options,
IP options are rarely seen due to practicality and security concerns. In fact, many Internet routers block the most
dangerous options such as source routing. Yet options can still be useful in some cases for determining and
manipulating the network route to target machines. For example, you may be able to use the record route option to
determine a path to a target even when more traditional traceroute-style approaches fail. Or if your packets are
being dropped by a certain firewall, you may be able to specify a different route with the strict or loose source
routing options.
The most powerful way to specify IP options is to simply pass in values as the argument to --ip-options. Precede each
hex number with \x then the two digits. You may repeat certain characters by following them with an asterisk and then
the number of times you wish them to repeat. For example, \x01\x07\x04\x00*36\x01 is a hex string containing 36 NUL
bytes.
Nmap also offers a shortcut mechanism for specifying options. Simply pass the letter R, T, or U to request
record-route,. record-timestamp,. or both options together, respectively. Loose or strict source routing. may be
specified with an L or S followed by a space and then a space-separated list of IP addresses.
If you wish to see the options in packets sent and received, specify --packet-trace. For more information and
examples of using IP options with Nmap, see http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2006/q3/0052.html.
--ttl value (Set IP time-to-live field) .
Sets the IPv4 time-to-live field in sent packets to the given value.
--randomize-hosts (Randomize target host order) .
Tells Nmap to shuffle each group of up to 16384 hosts before it scans them. This can make the scans less obvious to
various network monitoring systems, especially when you combine it with slow timing options. If you want to randomize
over larger group sizes, increase PING_GROUP_SZ. in nmap.h. and recompile. An alternative solution is to generate
the target IP list with a list scan (-sL -n -oN filename), randomize it with a Perl script, then provide the whole
list to Nmap with -iL..
--spoof-mac MAC address, prefix, or vendor name (Spoof MAC address) .
Asks Nmap to use the given MAC address for all of the raw ethernet frames it sends. This option implies --send-eth.
to ensure that Nmap actually sends ethernet-level packets. The MAC given can take several formats. If it is simply
the number 0, Nmap chooses a completely random MAC address for the session. If the given string is an even number of
hex digits (with the pairs optionally separated by a colon), Nmap will use those as the MAC. If fewer than 12 hex
digits are provided, Nmap fills in the remainder of the six bytes with random values. If the argument isn't a zero or
hex string, Nmap looks through nmap-mac-prefixes to find a vendor name containing the given string (it is case
insensitive). If a match is found, Nmap uses the vendor's OUI (three-byte prefix). and fills out the remaining three
bytes randomly. Valid --spoof-mac argument examples are Apple, 0, 01:02:03:04:05:06, deadbeefcafe, 0020F2, and Cisco.
This option only affects raw packet scans such as SYN scan or OS detection, not connection-oriented features such as
version detection or the Nmap Scripting Engine.
--badsum (Send packets with bogus TCP/UDP checksums) .
Asks Nmap to use an invalid TCP, UDP or SCTP checksum for packets sent to target hosts. Since virtually all host IP
stacks properly drop these packets, any responses received are likely coming from a firewall or IDS that didn't
bother to verify the checksum. For more details on this technique, see http://nmap.org/p60-12.html
--adler32 (Use deprecated Adler32 instead of CRC32C for SCTP checksums) .
Asks Nmap to use the deprecated Adler32 algorithm for calculating the SCTP checksum. If --adler32 is not given,
CRC-32C (Castagnoli) is used. RFC 2960[14] originally defined Adler32 as checksum algorithm for SCTP; RFC 4960[7]
later redefined the SCTP checksums to use CRC-32C. Current SCTP implementations should be using CRC-32C, but in order
to elicit responses from old, legacy SCTP implementations, it may be preferrable to use Adler32.
OUTPUT
Any security tool is only as useful as the output it generates. Complex tests and algorithms are of little value if they
aren't presented in an organized and comprehensible fashion. Given the number of ways Nmap is used by people and other
software, no single format can please everyone. So Nmap offers several formats, including the interactive mode for humans
to read directly and XML for easy parsing by software.
In addition to offering different output formats, Nmap provides options for controlling the verbosity of output as well
as debugging messages. Output types may be sent to standard output or to named files, which Nmap can append to or
clobber. Output files may also be used to resume aborted scans.
Nmap makes output available in five different formats. The default is called interactive output,. and it is sent to
standard output (stdout).. There is also normal output,. which is similar to interactive except that it displays less
runtime information and warnings since it is expected to be analyzed after the scan completes rather than interactively.
XML output. is one of the most important output types, as it can be converted to HTML, easily parsed by programs such as
Nmap graphical user interfaces, or imported into databases.
The two remaining output types are the simple grepable output. which includes most information for a target host on a
single line, and sCRiPt KiDDi3 0utPUt. for users who consider themselves |<-r4d.
While interactive output is the default and has no associated command-line options, the other four format options use the
same syntax. They take one argument, which is the filename that results should be stored in. Multiple formats may be
specified, but each format may only be specified once. For example, you may wish to save normal output for your own
review while saving XML of the same scan for programmatic analysis. You might do this with the options -oX myscan.xml -oN
myscan.nmap. While this chapter uses the simple names like myscan.xml for brevity, more descriptive names are generally
recommended. The names chosen are a matter of personal preference, though I use long ones that incorporate the scan date
and a word or two describing the scan, placed in a directory named after the company I'm scanning.
While these options save results to files, Nmap still prints interactive output to stdout as usual. For example, the
command nmap -oX myscan.xml target prints XML to myscan.xml and fills standard output with the same interactive results
it would have printed if -oX wasn't specified at all. You can change this by passing a hyphen character as the argument
to one of the format types. This causes Nmap to deactivate interactive output, and instead print results in the format
you specified to the standard output stream. So the command nmap -oX - target will send only XML output to stdout..
Serious errors may still be printed to the normal error stream, stderr..
Unlike some Nmap arguments, the space between the logfile option flag (such as -oX) and the filename or hyphen is
mandatory. If you omit the flags and give arguments such as -oG- or -oXscan.xml, a backwards compatibility feature of
Nmap will cause the creation of normal format output files named G- and Xscan.xml respectively.
All of these arguments support strftime-like. conversions in the filename. %H, %M, %S, %m, %d, %y, and %Y are all
exactly the same as in strftime. %T is the same as %H%M%S, %R is the same as %H%M, and %D is the same as %m%d%y. A %
followed by any other character just yields that character (%% gives you a percent symbol). So -oX 'scan-%T-%D.xml' will
use an XML file in the form of scan-144840-121307.xml.
Nmap also offers options to control scan verbosity and to append to output files rather than clobbering them. All of
these options are described below.
Nmap Output Formats
-oN filespec (normal output) .
Requests that normal output be directed to the given filename. As discussed above, this differs slightly from
interactive output.
-oX filespec (XML output) .
Requests that XML output be directed to the given filename. Nmap includes a document type definition (DTD) which
allows XML parsers to validate Nmap XML output. While it is primarily intended for programmatic use, it can also help
humans interpret Nmap XML output. The DTD defines the legal elements of the format, and often enumerates the
attributes and values they can take on. The latest version is always available from http://nmap.org/data/nmap.dtd.
XML offers a stable format that is easily parsed by software. Free XML parsers are available for all major computer
languages, including C/C++, Perl, Python, and Java. People have even written bindings for most of these languages to
handle Nmap output and execution specifically. Examples are Nmap::Scanner[15] and Nmap::Parser[16] in Perl CPAN. In
almost all cases that a non-trivial application interfaces with Nmap, XML is the preferred format.
The XML output references an XSL stylesheet which can be used to format the results as HTML. The easiest way to use
this is simply to load the XML output in a web browser such as Firefox or IE. By default, this will only work on the
machine you ran Nmap on (or a similarly configured one) due to the hard-coded nmap.xsl filesystem path. Use the
--webxml or --stylesheet options to create portable XML files that render as HTML on any web-connected machine.
-oS filespec (ScRipT KIdd|3 oUTpuT) .
Script kiddie output is like interactive output, except that it is post-processed to better suit the l33t HaXXorZ who
previously looked down on Nmap due to its consistent capitalization and spelling. Humor impaired people should note
that this option is making fun of the script kiddies before flaming me for supposedly "helping them".
-oG filespec (grepable output) .
This output format is covered last because it is deprecated. The XML output format is far more powerful, and is
nearly as convenient for experienced users. XML is a standard for which dozens of excellent parsers are available,
while grepable output is my own simple hack. XML is extensible to support new Nmap features as they are released,
while I often must omit those features from grepable output for lack of a place to put them.
Nevertheless, grepable output is still quite popular. It is a simple format that lists each host on one line and can
be trivially searched and parsed with standard Unix tools such as grep, awk, cut, sed, diff, and Perl. Even I usually
use it for one-off tests done at the command line. Finding all the hosts with the SSH port open or that are running
Solaris takes only a simple grep to identify the hosts, piped to an awk or cut command to print the desired fields.
Grepable output consists of comments (lines starting with a pound (#)). and target lines. A target line includes a
combination of six labeled fields, separated by tabs and followed with a colon. The fields are Host, Ports,
Protocols, Ignored State, OS, Seq Index, IP ID, and Status.
The most important of these fields is generally Ports, which gives details on each interesting port. It is a comma
separated list of port entries. Each port entry represents one interesting port, and takes the form of seven slash
(/) separated subfields. Those subfields are: Port number, State, Protocol, Owner, Service, SunRPC info, and Version
info.
As with XML output, this man page does not allow for documenting the entire format. A more detailed look at the Nmap
grepable output format is available from http://nmap.org/book/output-formats-grepable-output.html.
-oA basename (Output to all formats) .
As a convenience, you may specify -oA basename to store scan results in normal, XML, and grepable formats at once.
They are stored in basename.nmap, basename.xml, and basename.gnmap, respectively. As with most programs, you can
prefix the filenames with a directory path, such as ~/nmaplogs/foocorp/ on Unix or c:\hacking\sco on Windows.
Verbosity and debugging options
-v (Increase verbosity level) .
Increases the verbosity level, causing Nmap to print more information about the scan in progress. Open ports are
shown as they are found and completion time estimates are provided when Nmap thinks a scan will take more than a few
minutes. Use it twice or more for even greater verbosity.
Most changes only affect interactive output, and some also affect normal and script kiddie output. The other output
types are meant to be processed by machines, so Nmap can give substantial detail by default in those formats without
fatiguing a human user. However, there are a few changes in other modes where output size can be reduced
substantially by omitting some detail. For example, a comment line in the grepable output that provides a list of all
ports scanned is only printed in verbose mode because it can be quite long.
-d [level] (Increase or set debugging level) .
When even verbose mode doesn't provide sufficient data for you, debugging is available to flood you with much more!
As with the verbosity option (-v), debugging is enabled with a command-line flag (-d) and the debug level can be
increased by specifying it multiple times.. Alternatively, you can set a debug level by giving an argument to -d.
For example, -d9 sets level nine. That is the highest effective level and will produce thousands of lines unless you
run a very simple scan with very few ports and targets.
Debugging output is useful when a bug is suspected in Nmap, or if you are simply confused as to what Nmap is doing
and why. As this feature is mostly intended for developers, debug lines aren't always self-explanatory. You may get
something like: Timeout vals: srtt: -1 rttvar: -1 to: 1000000 delta 14987 ==> srtt: 14987 rttvar: 14987 to: 100000.
If you don't understand a line, your only recourses are to ignore it, look it up in the source code, or request help
from the development list (nmap-dev).. Some lines are self explanatory, but the messages become more obscure as the
debug level is increased.
--reason (Host and port state reasons) .
Shows the reason each port is set to a specific state and the reason each host is up or down. This option displays
the type of the packet that determined a port or hosts state. For example, A RST packet from a closed port or an echo
reply from an alive host. The information Nmap can provide is determined by the type of scan or ping. The SYN scan
and SYN ping (-sS and -PS) are very detailed, but the TCP connect scan (-sT) is limited by the implementation of the
connect system call. This feature is automatically enabled by the debug option (-d). and the results are stored in
XML log files even if this option is not specified.
--stats-every time (Print periodic timing stats) .
Periodically prints a timing status message after each interval of time. The time is a specification of the kind
described in the section called "TIMING AND PERFORMANCE"; so for example, use --stats-every 10s to get a status
update every 10 seconds. Updates are printed to interactive output (the screen) and XML output.
--packet-trace (Trace packets and data sent and received) .
Causes Nmap to print a summary of every packet sent or received. This is often used for debugging, but is also a
valuable way for new users to understand exactly what Nmap is doing under the covers. To avoid printing thousands of
lines, you may want to specify a limited number of ports to scan, such as -p20-30. If you only care about the goings
on of the version detection subsystem, use --version-trace instead. If you only care about script tracing, specify
--script-trace. With --packet-trace, you get all of the above.
--open (Show only open (or possibly open) ports) .
Sometimes you only care about ports you can actually connect to (open ones), and don't want results cluttered with
closed, filtered, and closed|filtered ports. Output customization is normally done after the scan using tools such as
grep, awk, and Perl, but this feature was added due to overwhelming requests. Specify --open to only see open,
open|filtered, and unfiltered ports. These three ports are treated just as they normally are, which means that
open|filtered and unfiltered may be condensed into counts if there are an overwhelming number of them.
--iflist (List interfaces and routes) .
Prints the interface list and system routes as detected by Nmap. This is useful for debugging routing problems or
device mischaracterization (such as Nmap treating a PPP connection as ethernet).
--log-errors (Log errors/warnings to normal mode output file) .
Warnings and errors printed by Nmap usually go only to the screen (interactive output), leaving any normal-format
output files (usually specified with -oN) uncluttered. When you do want to see those messages in the normal output
file you specified, add this option. It is useful when you aren't watching the interactive output or when you want to
record errors while debugging a problem. The error and warning messages will still appear in interactive mode too.
This won't work for most errors related to bad command-line arguments because Nmap may not have initialized its
output files yet. In addition, some Nmap error and warning messages use a different system which does not yet support
this option.
An alternative to --log-errors is redirecting interactive output (including the standard error stream) to a file.
Most Unix shells make this approach easy, though it can be difficult on Windows.
Miscellaneous output options
--append-output (Append to rather than clobber output files) .
When you specify a filename to an output format flag such as -oX or -oN, that file is overwritten by default. If you
prefer to keep the existing content of the file and append the new results, specify the --append-output option. All
output filenames specified in that Nmap execution will then be appended to rather than clobbered. This doesn't work
well for XML (-oX) scan data as the resultant file generally won't parse properly until you fix it up by hand.
--resume filename (Resume aborted scan) .
Some extensive Nmap runs take a very long time--on the order of days. Such scans don't always run to completion.
Restrictions may prevent Nmap from being run during working hours, the network could go down, the machine Nmap is
running on might suffer a planned or unplanned reboot, or Nmap itself could crash. The administrator running Nmap
could cancel it for any other reason as well, by pressing ctrl-C. Restarting the whole scan from the beginning may be
undesirable. Fortunately, if normal (-oN) or grepable (-oG) logs were kept, the user can ask Nmap to resume scanning
with the target it was working on when execution ceased. Simply specify the --resume option and pass the
normal/grepable output file as its argument. No other arguments are permitted, as Nmap parses the output file to use
the same ones specified previously. Simply call Nmap as nmap --resume logfilename. Nmap will append new results to
the data files specified in the previous execution. Resumption does not support the XML output format because
combining the two runs into one valid XML file would be difficult.
--stylesheet path or URL (Set XSL stylesheet to transform XML output) .
Nmap ships with an XSL stylesheet named nmap.xsl for viewing or translating XML output to HTML. The XML output
includes an xml-stylesheet directive which points to nmap.xml where it was initially installed by Nmap (or in the
current working directory on Windows). Simply load Nmap's XML output in a modern web browser and it should retrieve
nmap.xsl from the filesystem and use it to render results. If you wish to use a different stylesheet, specify it as
the argument to --stylesheet. You must pass the full pathname or URL. One common invocation is --stylesheet
http://nmap.org/data/nmap.xsl. This tells a browser to load the latest version of the stylesheet from Nmap.Org. The
--webxml option does the same thing with less typing and memorization. Loading the XSL from Nmap.Org makes it easier
to view results on a machine that doesn't have Nmap (and thus nmap.xsl) installed. So the URL is often more useful,
but the local filesystem location of nmap.xsl is used by default for privacy reasons.
--webxml (Load stylesheet from Nmap.Org) .
This convenience option is simply an alias for --stylesheet http://nmap.org/data/nmap.xsl.
--no-stylesheet (Omit XSL stylesheet declaration from XML) .
Specify this option to prevent Nmap from associating any XSL stylesheet with its XML output. The xml-stylesheet
directive is omitted.
MISCELLANEOUS OPTIONS
This section describes some important (and not-so-important) options that don't really fit anywhere else.
-6 (Enable IPv6 scanning) .
Since 2002, Nmap has offered IPv6 support for its most popular features. In particular, ping scanning (TCP-only),
connect scanning, and version detection all support IPv6. The command syntax is the same as usual except that you
also add the -6 option. Of course, you must use IPv6 syntax if you specify an address rather than a hostname. An
address might look like 3ffe:7501:4819:2000:210:f3ff:fe03:14d0, so hostnames are recommended. The output looks the
same as usual, with the IPv6 address on the "interesting ports" line being the only IPv6 give away.
While IPv6 hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, it gets significant use in some (usually Asian) countries and
most modern operating systems support it. To use Nmap with IPv6, both the source and target of your scan must be
configured for IPv6. If your ISP (like most of them) does not allocate IPv6 addresses to you, free tunnel brokers are
widely available and work fine with Nmap. I use the free IPv6 tunnel broker. service at http://www.tunnelbroker.net.
Other tunnel brokers are listed at Wikipedia[17]. 6to4 tunnels are another popular, free approach.
-A (Aggressive scan options) .
This option enables additional advanced and aggressive options. I haven't decided exactly which it stands for yet.
Presently this enables OS detection (-O), version scanning (-sV), script scanning (-sC) and traceroute
(--traceroute). More features may be added in the future. The point is to enable a comprehensive set of scan options
without people having to remember a large set of flags. However, because script scanning with the default set is
considered intrusive, you should not use -A against target networks without permission. This option only enables
features, and not timing options (such as -T4) or verbosity options (-v) that you might want as well.
--datadir directoryname (Specify custom Nmap data file location) .
Nmap obtains some special data at runtime in files named nmap-service-probes, nmap-services, nmap-protocols,
nmap-rpc, nmap-mac-prefixes, and nmap-os-db. If the location of any of these files has been specified (using the
--servicedb or --versiondb options), that location is used for that file. After that, Nmap searches these files in
the directory specified with the --datadir option (if any). Any files not found there, are searched for in the
directory specified by the NMAPDIR environmental variable. ~/.nmap. for real and effective UIDs (POSIX systems
only) or location of the Nmap executable (Win32 only), and then a compiled-in location such as /usr/local/share/nmap
or /usr/share/nmap . As a last resort, Nmap will look in the current directory.
--servicedb services file (Specify custom services file) .
Asks Nmap to use the specified services file rather than the nmap-services data file that comes with Nmap. Using this
option also causes a fast scan (-F) to be used. See the description for --datadir for more information on Nmap's data
files.
--versiondb service probes file (Specify custom service probes file) .
Asks Nmap to use the specified service probes file rather than the nmap-service-probes data file that comes with
Nmap. See the description for --datadir for more information on Nmap's data files.
--send-eth (Use raw ethernet sending) .
Asks Nmap to send packets at the raw ethernet (data link) layer rather than the higher IP (network) layer. By
default, Nmap chooses the one which is generally best for the platform it is running on. Raw sockets (IP layer). are
generally most efficient for Unix machines, while ethernet frames are required for Windows operation since Microsoft
disabled raw socket support. Nmap still uses raw IP packets on Unix despite this option when there is no other choice
(such as non-ethernet connections).
--send-ip (Send at raw IP level) .
Asks Nmap to send packets via raw IP sockets rather than sending lower level ethernet frames. It is the complement to
the --send-eth option discussed previously.
--privileged (Assume that the user is fully privileged) .
Tells Nmap to simply assume that it is privileged enough to perform raw socket sends, packet sniffing, and similar
operations that usually require root privileges. on Unix systems. By default Nmap quits if such operations are
requested but geteuid is not zero. --privileged is useful with Linux kernel capabilities and similar systems that
may be configured to allow unprivileged users to perform raw-packet scans. Be sure to provide this option flag before
any flags for options that require privileges (SYN scan, OS detection, etc.). The NMAP_PRIVILEGED. environmental
variable may be set as an equivalent alternative to --privileged.
--unprivileged (Assume that the user lacks raw socket privileges) .
This option is the opposite of --privileged. It tells Nmap to treat the user as lacking network raw socket and
sniffing privileges. This is useful for testing, debugging, or when the raw network functionality of your operating
system is somehow broken. The NMAP_UNPRIVILEGED. environmental variable may be set as an equivalent alternative to
--unprivileged.
--release-memory (Release memory before quitting) .
This option is only useful for memory-leak debugging. It causes Nmap to release allocated memory just before it quits
so that actual memory leaks are easier to spot. Normally Nmap skips this as the OS does this anyway upon process
termination.
--interactive (Start in interactive mode) .
Starts Nmap in interactive mode, which offers an interactive Nmap prompt allowing easy launching of multiple scans
(either synchronously or in the background). This is useful for people who scan from multi-user systems as they often
want to test their security without letting everyone else on the system know exactly which systems they are scanning.
Use --interactive to activate this mode and then type h for help. This option is rarely used because proper shells
are usually more familiar and feature-complete. This option includes a bang (!) operator for executing shell
commands, which is one of many reasons not to install Nmap setuid root..
-V; --version (Print version number) .
Prints the Nmap version number and exits.
-h; --help (Print help summary page) .
Prints a short help screen with the most common command flags. Running Nmap without any arguments does the same
thing.
RUNTIME INTERACTION
During the execution of Nmap, all key presses are captured. This allows you to interact with the program without aborting
and restarting it. Certain special keys will change options, while any other keys will print out a status message telling
you about the scan. The convention is that lowercase letters increase the amount of printing, and uppercase letters
decrease the printing. You may also press `?' for help.
v / V
Increase / decrease the verbosity level
d / D
Increase / decrease the debugging Level
p / P
Turn on / off packet tracing
?
Print a runtime interaction help screen
Anything else
Print out a status message like this:
Stats: 0:00:08 elapsed; 111 hosts completed (5 up), 5 undergoing Service Scan
Service scan Timing: About 28.00% done; ETC: 16:18 (0:00:15 remaining)
EXAMPLES
Here are some Nmap usage examples, from the simple and routine to a little more complex and esoteric. Some actual IP
addresses and domain names are used to make things more concrete. In their place you should substitute addresses/names
from your own network.. While I don't think port scanning other networks is or should be illegal, some network
administrators don't appreciate unsolicited scanning of their networks and may complain. Getting permission first is the
best approach.
For testing purposes, you have permission to scan the host scanme.nmap.org. This permission only includes scanning via
Nmap and not testing exploits or denial of service attacks. To conserve bandwidth, please do not initiate more than a
dozen scans against that host per day. If this free scanning target service is abused, it will be taken down and Nmap
will report Failed to resolve given hostname/IP: scanme.nmap.org. These permissions also apply to the hosts
scanme2.nmap.org, scanme3.nmap.org, and so on, though those hosts do not currently exist.
nmap -v scanme.nmap.org
This option scans all reserved TCP ports on the machine scanme.nmap.org . The -v option enables verbose mode.
nmap -sS -O scanme.nmap.org/24
Launches a stealth SYN scan against each machine that is up out of the 256 IPs on "class C" sized network where Scanme
resides. It also tries to determine what operating system is running on each host that is up and running. This requires
root privileges because of the SYN scan and OS detection.
nmap -sV -p 22,53,110,143,4564 198.116.0-255.1-127
Launches host enumeration and a TCP scan at the first half of each of the 255 possible eight-bit subnets in the 198.116
class B address space. This tests whether the systems run SSH, DNS, POP3, or IMAP on their standard ports, or anything on
port 4564. For any of these ports found open, version detection is used to determine what application is running.
nmap -v -iR 100000 -PN -p 80
Asks Nmap to choose 100,000 hosts at random and scan them for web servers (port 80). Host enumeration is disabled with
-PN since first sending a couple probes to determine whether a host is up is wasteful when you are only probing one port
on each target host anyway.
nmap -PN -p80 -oX logs/pb-port80scan.xml -oG logs/pb-port80scan.gnmap 216.163.128.20/20
This scans 4096 IPs for any web servers (without pinging them) and saves the output in grepable and XML formats.
NMAP BOOK
While this reference guide details all material Nmap options, it can't fully demonstrate how to apply those features to
quickly solve real-world tasks. For that, we released Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network
Discovery and Security Scanning. Topics include subverting firewalls and intrusion detection systems, optimizing Nmap
performance, and automating common networking tasks with the Nmap Scripting Engine. Hints and instructions are provided
for common Nmap tasks such as taking network inventory, penetration testing, detecting rogue wireless access points, and
quashing network worm outbreaks. Examples and diagrams show actual communication on the wire. More than half of the book
is available free online. See http://nmap.org/book for more information.
BUGS
Like its author, Nmap isn't perfect. But you can help make it better by sending bug reports or even writing patches. If
Nmap doesn't behave the way you expect, first upgrade to the latest version available from http://nmap.org. If the
problem persists, do some research to determine whether it has already been discovered and addressed. Try searching for
the error message on our search page at http://insecure.org/search.html or at Google. Also try browsing the nmap-dev
archives at http://seclists.org/.. Read this full manual page as well. If nothing comes of this, mail a bug report to
nmap-devATinsecure.org. Please include everything you have learned about the problem, as well as what version of Nmap you
are running and what operating system version it is running on. Problem reports and Nmap usage questions sent to
nmap-devATinsecure.org are far more likely to be answered than those sent to Fyodor directly. If you subscribe to the
nmap-dev list before posting, your message will bypass moderation and get through more quickly. Subscribe at
http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev.
Code patches to fix bugs are even better than bug reports. Basic instructions for creating patch files with your changes
are available at http://nmap.org/data/HACKING. Patches may be sent to nmap-dev (recommended) or to Fyodor directly.
AUTHOR
Gordon "Fyodor" Lyon fyodorATinsecure.org (http://insecure.org)
Hundreds of people have made valuable contributions to Nmap over the years. These are detailed in the CHANGELOG. file
which is distributed with Nmap and also available from http://nmap.org/changelog.html.
LEGAL NOTICES
Nmap Copyright and Licensing
The Nmap Security Scanner is (C) 1996-2009 Insecure.Com LLC. Nmap is also a registered trademark of Insecure.Com LLC.
This program is free software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; Version 2 with the clarifications and exceptions described below. This
guarantees your right to use, modify, and redistribute this software under certain conditions. If you wish to embed Nmap
technology into proprietary software, we sell alternative licenses (contact salesATinsecure.com). Dozens of software
vendors already license Nmap technology such as host discovery, port scanning, OS detection, and version detection.
Note that the GPL places important restrictions on "derived works", yet it does not provide a detailed definition of that
term. To avoid misunderstandings, we consider an application to constitute a "derivative work" for the purpose of this
license if it does any of the following:
o Integrates source code from Nmap
o Reads or includes Nmap copyrighted data files, such as nmap-os-db or nmap-service-probes.
o Executes Nmap and parses the results (as opposed to typical shell or execution-menu apps, which simply display raw
Nmap output and so are not derivative works.)
o Integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap into a proprietary executable installer, such as those produced by InstallShield.
o Links to a library or executes a program that does any of the above.
The term "Nmap" should be taken to also include any portions or derived works of Nmap. This list is not exclusive, but is
meant to clarify our interpretation of derived works with some common examples. Our interpretation applies only to Nmap--
we don't speak for other people's GPL works.
If you have any questions about the GPL licensing restrictions on using Nmap in non-GPL works, we would be happy to help.
As mentioned above, we also offer alternative license to integrate Nmap into proprietary applications and appliances.
These contracts have been sold to many security vendors, and generally include a perpetual license as well as providing
for priority support and updates as well as helping to fund the continued development of Nmap technology. Please email
salesATinsecure.com for further information.
As a special exception to the GPL terms, Insecure.Com LLC grants permission to link the code of this program with any
version of the OpenSSL library which is distributed under a license identical to that listed in the included
COPYING.OpenSSL file, and distribute linked combinations including the two.. You must obey the GNU GPL in all respects
for all of the code used other than OpenSSL. If you modify this file, you may extend this exception to your version of
the file, but you are not obligated to do so.
If you received these files with a written license agreement or contract stating terms other than the terms above, then
that alternative license agreement takes precedence over these comments.
Creative Commons License for this Nmap Guide
This Nmap Reference Guide is (C) 2005-2009 Insecure.Com LLC. It is hereby placed under version 3.0 of the Creative
Commons Attribution License[18]. This allows you redistribute and modify the work as you desire, as long as you credit
the original source. Alternatively, you may choose to treat this document as falling under the same license as Nmap
itself (discussed previously).
Source Code Availability and Community Contributions
Source is provided to this software because we believe users have a right to know exactly what a program is going to do
before they run it. This also allows you to audit the software for security holes (none have been found so far).
Source code also allows you to port Nmap to new platforms, fix bugs, and add new features. You are highly encouraged to
send your changes to nmap-devATinsecure.org for possible incorporation into the main distribution. By sending these
changes to Fyodor or one of the Insecure.Org development mailing lists, it is assumed that you are offering the Nmap
Project (Insecure.Com LLC) the unlimited, non-exclusive right to reuse, modify, and relicense the code. Nmap will always
be available Open Source,. but this is important because the inability to relicense code has caused devastating problems
for other Free Software projects (such as KDE and NASM). We also occasionally relicense the code to third parties as
discussed above. If you wish to specify special license conditions of your contributions, just say so when you send them.
No Warranty.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License v2.0 for more details
at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html, or in the COPYING file included with Nmap.
It should also be noted that Nmap has occasionally been known to crash poorly written applications, TCP/IP stacks, and
even operating systems.. While this is extremely rare, it is important to keep in mind. Nmap should never be run
against mission critical systems unless you are prepared to suffer downtime. We acknowledge here that Nmap may crash your
systems or networks and we disclaim all liability for any damage or problems Nmap could cause.
Inappropriate Usage
Because of the slight risk of crashes and because a few black hats like to use Nmap for reconnaissance prior to attacking
systems, there are administrators who become upset and may complain when their system is scanned. Thus, it is often
advisable to request permission before doing even a light scan of a network.
Nmap should never be installed with special privileges (e.g. suid root) for security reasons..
Third-Party Software
This product includes software developed by the Apache Software Foundation[19]. A modified version of the Libpcap
portable packet capture library[20]. is distributed along with Nmap. The Windows version of Nmap utilized the
Libpcap-derived WinPcap library[21]. instead. Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE library[22],. which is
open-source software, written by Philip Hazel.. Certain raw networking functions use the Libdnet[23]. networking
library, which was written by Dug Song.. A modified version is distributed with Nmap. Nmap can optionally link with the
OpenSSL cryptography toolkit[24]. for SSL version detection support. The Nmap Scripting Engine uses an embedded version
of the Lua programming language[25].. All of the third-party software described in this paragraph is freely
redistributable under BSD-style software licenses.
United States Export Control.
Nmap only uses encryption when compiled with the optional OpenSSL support and linked with OpenSSL. When compiled without
OpenSSL support, Insecure.Com LLC believes that Nmap is not subject to U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR)[26]
export control. As such, there is no applicable ECCN (explort control classification number) and exportation does not
require any special license, permit, or other governmental authorization.
When compiled with OpenSSL support or distributed as source code, Insecure.Com LLC believes that Nmap falls under U.S.
ECCN 5D002[27] ("Information Security Software"). We distribute Nmap under the TSU exception for publicly available
encryption software defined in EAR 740.13(e)[28].
NOTES
1. Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning
http://nmap.org/book/
2. RFC 1122
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1122.txt
3. RFC 792
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc792.txt
4. RFC 950
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc950.txt
5. RFC 1918
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918.txt
6. UDP
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc768.txt
7. SCTP
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4960.txt
8. TCP RFC
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793.txt
9. RFC 959
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc959.txt
10. RFC 1323
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1323.txt
11. Lua programming language
http://lua.org
12. precedence
http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#2.5.3
13. IP protocol
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791.txt
14. RFC 2960
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt
15. Nmap::Scanner
http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmap-scanner/
16. Nmap::Parser
http://nmapparser.wordpress.com/
17. listed at Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IPv6_tunnel_brokers
18. Creative Commons Attribution License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
19. Apache Software Foundation
http://www.apache.org
20. Libpcap portable packet capture library
http://www.tcpdump.org
21. WinPcap library
http://www.winpcap.org
22. PCRE library
http://www.pcre.org
23. Libdnet
http://libdnet.sourceforge.net
24. OpenSSL cryptography toolkit
http://www.openssl.org
25. Lua programming language
http://www.lua.org
26. Export Administration Regulations (EAR)
http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/ear_data.html
27. 5D002
http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/ccl5-pt2.pdf
28. EAR 740.13(e)
http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/740.pdf
Nmap 01/26/2010 NMAP(1)
