BrooklynCollegeM.Meyer,2009IntroductiontoNetwork.pdf

Bridges To Computing Brooklyn College M. Meyer, 2009 Introduction to Network Security Lab 2 - NMap 1 Introduction: Nmap as an Offensive Network Security Tool Nmap, short for Network Mapper, is a very versatile security tool that should be included in every professional’s toolkit. Nmap is an open source utility for network exploration, security scanning and auditing. It comes with a very wide range of options that can make the utility more robust and can add or change features to your specifications. Nmap was created by Gordon Lyon, a.k.a. Fyodor Vaskovich, and first published in 1997. Since the source code has been available the software has been expanded greatly and is currently at version 4.85. In addition to improvements in the functionality of the program, graphical user interfaces and support for numerous operating systems have been developed. Currently Nmap can run on Linux, Windows, OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, Amiga, HP-UX, and others. GUI versions are also available on most of these systems along with the command line versions. There are also implementations that can take advantage of web browsing to allow for access to Nmap via a web browser. Nmap is very popular among security professionals as well as black hat hackers because of its numerous uses. The most recent version of the program can be used to check for network host discovery, port scanning, version and OS detection, network inventory, ping sweeps, and detailing logging mechanisms. These various uses are all important, but what the most basic sections of the program deal with are host discovery and port scanning. Nmap can be used to check to see what other devices and machines are connected to the network. It can also be used to check which ports on these devices are open and closed. The results of these type scans can be saved to a log file which can be analyzed at a later time or saved for future comparison. Nmap is a tool that can