Nmap is an open source network monitoring and port scanning tool to find the hosts and services in the computer by sending the packets to the target host for network discovery and security auditing.
Numerous frameworks and system admins additionally think that its helpful for assignments, for example, network inventory, overseeing administration overhaul timetables, and observing host or administration uptime.
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.
It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. it runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results in the viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).
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Nmap is …
- Flexible: Supports dozens of advanced techniques for mapping out networks filled with IP filters, firewalls, routers, and other obstacles. This includes many port scanning mechanisms (both TCP & UDP), OS detection, version detection, ping sweeps, and more. See the documentation page.
- Powerful: Nmap has been used to scan huge networks of literally hundreds of thousands of machines.
- Portable: Most operating systems are supported, including Linux, Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, IRIX, Mac OS X, HP-UX, NetBSD, Sun OS, Amiga, and more.
- Easy: While NMAP offers a rich set of advanced features for power users, you can start out as simply as “nmap -v -A targethost“. Both traditional command line and graphical (GUI) versions are available to suit your preference.
- Free: The primary goals of this NMAP Project is to help make the Internet a little more secure and to provide administrators/auditors/hackers with an advanced tool for exploring their networks. it is available for free download, and also comes with full source code that you may modify and redistribute under the terms of the license.
- Well Documented: Significant effort has been put into comprehensive and up-to-date man pages, whitepapers, tutorials, and even a whole book! Find them in multiple languages here.
- Supported: While it comes with no warranty, it is well supported by a vibrant community of developers and users. Most of this interaction occurs on the Nmap mailing lists. Most bug reports and questions should be sent to the nmap-dev list, but only after you read the guidelines.
- Acclaimed: Nmap has won various honors, including “Information Security Product of the Year” by Linux Journal, Info World and Codetalker Digest. It has been included in many magazine articles, a few motion pictures, many books, and one comic book arrangement. Visit the press page for further subtleties.
- Popular: Thousands of people download every day, and it is included with many operating systems (Redhat Linux, Debian Linux, Gentoo, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc). It is among the top ten (out of 30,000) programs at the Freshmeat.Net repository. This is important because it lends Nmap its vibrant development and user support communities.
Conclusion
Nmap can perform various scanning operation and it has been leading scanning tool in the security industry since its release in 1997, also its worlds leading port scanners to find out open ports and firewall. still, Nmap used by various organizations and penetration tester to find out loops and secure the network.
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