Nmap network security scanner man page



       nmap - Network exploration tool and security scanner


SYNOPSIS

       nmap [Scan Type(s)] [Options] <host or net #1 ... [#N]>


DESCRIPTION

       Nmap  is designed to allow system administrators and curi-
       ous individuals to scan large networks to determine  which
       hosts  are  up  and what services they are offering.  nmap
       supports a large number of scanning  techniques  such  as:
       UDP, TCP connect(), TCP SYN (half open), ftp proxy (bounce
       attack), Reverse-ident, ICMP (ping sweep), FIN, ACK sweep,
       Xmas  Tree,  SYN sweep, and Null scan.  See the Scan Types
       section for more details.  nmap also offers  a  number  of
       advanced  features  such as remote OS detection via TCP/IP
       fingerprinting,  stealth  scanning,  dynamic   delay   and
       retransmission  calculations, parallel scanning, detection
       of down hosts via parallel  pings,  decoy  scanning,  port
       filtering  detection, fragmentation scanning, and flexible
       target and port specification.

       Significant effort has been put into decent  nmap  perfor-
       mance  for  non-root  users.  Unfortunately, many critical
       kernel interfaces (such as raw sockets) require root priv-
       ileges.  nmap should be run as root whenever possible.

       The  result of running nmap is usually a list of interest-
       ing ports on the machine(s) being scanned (if any).   Nmap
       always  gives  the  port's  "well  known" service name (if
       any), number, state, and protocol.  The  state  is  either
       'open',  'filtered', or 'unfiltered'.  Open means that the
       target machine will accept()  connections  on  that  port.
       Filtered  means  that a firewall, filter, or other network
       obstacle is covering the port  and  preventing  nmap  from
       determining  whether  the  port is open.  Unfiltered means
       that the port is known by nmap to be closed and  no  fire-
       wall/filter  seems  to be interfering with nmap's attempts
       to determine this.  Unfiltered ports are the  common  case
       and  are  only shown when most of the scanned ports are in
       the filtered state.

       Depending on options used, nmap may also report  the  fol-
       lowing  characteristics of the remote host: OS in use, TCP
       sequencability, usernames running the programs which  have
       bound  to  each  port, the DNS name, whether the host is a
       smurf address, and a few others.


OPTIONS

       Options that make sense together  can  generally  be  com-
       bined.   Some  options are specific to certain scan modes.
       nmap tries to catch and warn the user about  psychotic  or
       unsupported option combinations.
       at the end, which demonstrates common usage.  You can also
       run  nmap  -h  for  a quick reference page listing all the
       options.

       Scan Types

       -sT    TCP connect() scan:  This is the most basic form of
              TCP scanning. The connect() system call provided by
              your operating system is used to open a  connection
              to  every  interesting  port on the machine. If the
              port is listening, connect() will  succeed,  other-
              wise the port isn't reachable. One strong advantage
              to this technique is that you don't need  any  spe-
              cial  privileges.  Any  user  on most UNIX boxes is
              free to use this call.

              This sort of scan is easily  detectable  as  target
              host logs will show a bunch of connection and error
              messages for the services which accept()  the  con-
              nection just to have it immediately shutdown.

       -sS    TCP  SYN  scan: 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  you
              wait  for  a response. A SYN|ACK indicates the port
              is listening. A RST is  indicative  of  a  non-lis-
              tener.   If a SYN|ACK is received, a RST is immedi-
              ately sent to tear down  the  connection  (actually
              our OS kernel does this for us). The primary advan-
              tage to this scanning technique is that fewer sites
              will  log  it.   Unfortunately you need root privi-
              leges to build these custom SYN packets.

       -sF -sX -sN
              Stealth FIN, Xmas Tree, or Null scan  modes:  There
              are  times when even SYN scanning isn't clandestine
              enough. Some firewalls and packet filters watch for
              SYNs to restricted ports, and programs like Synlog-
              ger and Courtney  are  available  to  detect  these
              scans. These advanced scans, on the other hand, may
              be able to pass through unmolested.

              The idea is that closed ports are required to reply
              to  your probe packet with an RST, while open ports
              must ignore the packets in question (see RFC 973 pp
              64).   The  FIN  scan  uses  a  bare (surprise) FIN
              packet as the probe, while the Xmas tree scan turns
              on  the  FIN,  URG,  and PUSH flags.  The Null scan
              turns off all flags.  Unfortunately Microsoft (like
              usual)  decided  to  completely ignore the standard
              and do things their own way.  Thus this  scan  type
              guish between the two platforms.  If the scan finds
              open ports, you know the machine is not  a  Windows
              box.   If  a  -sF,-sX,or  -sN  scan shows all ports
              closed, yet a SYN  (-sS)  scan  shows  ports  being
              opened,  you are probably looking at a Windows box.
              This is less useful now that  nmap  has  proper  OS
              detection  built  in.   There  are also a few other
              systems that are broken in the same way Windows is.
              They  include  Cisco,  BSDI,  HP/UX, MVS, and IRIX.
              All of the above send resets from  the  open  ports
              when they should just drop the packet.

       -sP    Ping  scanning:  Sometimes  you  only  want to know
              which hosts on a network are up.  Nmap can do  this
              by  sending  ICMP  echo request packets to every IP
              address on the networks you  specify.   Hosts  that
              respond  are up.  Unfortunately, some sites such as
              microsoft.com block  echo  request  packets.   Thus
              nmap can also send a TCP ack packet to (by default)
              port 80.  If we get an RST back,  that  machine  is
              up.   A  third  technique  involves  sending  a SYN
              packet and waiting for a RST  or  a  SYN/ACK.   For
              non-root users, a connect() method is used.

              By  default  (for  root  users), nmap uses both the
              ICMP and  ACK  techniques  in  parallel.   You  can
              change the -P option described later.

              Note  that  pinging  is done by default anyway, and
              only hosts that respond are scanned.  Only use this
              option  if you wish to ping sweep without doing any
              actual port scans.

       -sU    UDP scans: This method is used to  determine  which
              UDP  (User  Datagram  Protocol,  RFC 768) ports are
              open on a host.  The technique is to  send  0  byte
              udp packets to each port on the target machine.  If
              we receive an ICMP port unreachable  message,  then
              the  port  is  closed.   Otherwise  we assume it is
              open.

              Some people think UDP scanning is pointless. I usu-
              ally  remind  them  of  the  recent Solaris rcpbind
              hole. Rpcbind can be found  hiding  on  an  undocu-
              mented  UDP  port  somewhere  above  32770.  So  it
              doesn't matter that 111 is blocked by the firewall.
              But can you find which of the more than 30,000 high
              ports it is listening on? With a  UDP  scanner  you
              can!   There  is also the cDc Back Orifice backdoor
              program which hides on a configurable UDP  port  on
              Windows  machines.    Not  to mention the many com-
              monly vulnerable services that utilize UDP such  as
              slow since most hosts impliment a suggestion in RFC
              1812  (section  4.3.2.8) of limiting the ICMP error
              message rate.  For example, the  Linux  kernel  (in
              net/ipv4/icmp.h)   limits  destination  unreachable
              message generation to 80 per 4 seconds, with a  1/4
              second  penalty  if  that is exceeded.  Solaris has
              much more strict limits (about 2 messages per  sec-
              ond)  and  thus  takes  even  longer to scan.  nmap
              detects this rate limiting and slows  down  accord-
              ingly,  rather  than flood the network with useless
              packets that will be ignored by the target machine.

              As  is typical, Microsoft ignored the suggestion of
              the RFC and does not seem to do any  rate  limiting
              at  all on Win95 and NT machines.  Thus we can scan
              all 65K ports of a Windows  machine  very  quickly.
              Woop!

       -b <ftp relay host>
              FTP  bounce attack: An interesting "feature" of the
              ftp protocol (RFC 959) is support for  "proxy"  ftp
              connections.  In  other  words, I should be able to
              connect from evil.com to the  FTP  server  of  tar-
              get.com  and  request  that  the server send a file
              ANYWHERE on the internet!  Now this may have worked
              well  in  1985  when  the  RFC  was written. But in
              today's Internet, we can't  have  people  hijacking
              ftp servers and requesting that data be spit out to
              arbitrary points on the internet. As *Hobbit* wrote
              back  in  1995,  this protocol flaw "can be used to
              post virtually untraceable mail and news, hammer on
              servers at various sites, fill up disks, try to hop
              firewalls, and generally be annoying  and  hard  to
              track  down at the same time." What we will exploit
              this for is to (surprise, surprise) scan TCP  ports
              from  a  "proxy" ftp server. Thus you could connect
              to an ftp server behind a firewall, and  then  scan
              ports  that are more likely to be blocked (139 is a
              good one). If the ftp server  allows  reading  from
              and  writing to some directory (such as /incoming),
              you can send arbitrary data to ports  that  you  do
              find open (nmap doesn't do this for you though).

              The  argument  passed to the 'b' option is the host
              you want to use as a proxy, in standard  URL  nota-
              tion.      The     format     is:    username:pass-
              word@server:port.    Everything   but   server   is
              optional.  To determine what servers are vulnerable
              to this attack, you can see my  article  in  Phrack
              51.   And  updated version is available at the nmap
              URL (http://www.insecure.org/nmap).

              None of these are required but some  can  be  quite
              useful.

       -P0    Do  not  try  and ping hosts at all before scanning
              them.  This allows the scanning  of  networks  that
              don't  allow  ICMP  echo  requests  (or  responses)
              through their firewall.  microsoft.com is an  exam-
              ple  of  such a network, and thus you should always
              use -P0 or -PT80 when portscanning microsoft.com.

       -PT    Use TCP "ping" to  determine  what  hosts  are  up.
              Instead  of  sending  ICMP echo request packets and
              waiting for a response, we spew out TCP ACK packets
              throughout  the  target  network  (or  to  a single
              machine) and then watt  for  responses  to  trickle
              back.  Hosts that are up should respond with a RST.
              This option preserves the efficiency of only  scan-
              ning  hosts that are up while still allowing you to
              scan networks/hosts that block ping  packets.   For
              non  root users, we use connect().  To set the des-
              tination port of the  probe  packets  use  -PT<port
              number>.   The  default port is 80, since this port
              is often not filtered out.  -PS  This  option  uses
              SYN  (connection  request)  packets  instead of ACK
              packets for root users.  Hosts that are  up  should
              respond with a RST (or, rarely, a SYN|ACK).

       -PI    This  option  uses  a true ping (ICMP echo request)
              packet.  It finds hosts that are up and also  looks
              for  subnet-directed  broadcast  addresses  on your
              network.  These are IP addresses which  are  exter-
              nally  reachable  and  translate  to a broadcast of
              incomming IP packets  to  a  subnet  of  computers.
              These  should  be eliminated if found as they allow
              for numerous denial of service  attacks  (Smurf  is
              the most common).

       -PB    This  is  the  default ping type.  It uses both the
              ACK ( -PT ) and ICMP ( -PI )  sweeps  in  parallel.
              This  way  you can get firewalls that filter either
              one (but not both).

       -O     This option activates  remote  host  identification
              via TCP/IP fingerprinting.  In other words, it uses
              a bunch of techniques to detect subtleties  in  the
              underlying  operating  system  network stack of the
              computers you are scanning.  It uses this  informa-
              tion  to  create  a 'fingerprint' which it compares
              with its database of  known  OS  fingerprints  (the
              nmap-os-fingerprints  file)  to decide what type of
              system you are scanning.

              mail me the details (ie OS  blah  version  foo  was
              detected  as  OS  blah version bar).  If you find a
              machine with at least one port open for which  nmap
              says  'unknown  operating system', then it would be
              useful if you send me the IP address along with the
              OS  name and version number.  If you can't send the
              IP address, the next best thing is to run nmap with
              the  -d  option  and send me the three fingerprints
              that should result along with the OS name and  ver-
              sion  number.   By doing this you contribute to the
              pool of operating systems known to nmap and thus it
              will be more accurate for everyone.

       -I     This  turns on TCP reverse ident scanning. As noted
              by Dave Goldsmith in a 1996 Bugtraq post, the ident
              protocol  (rfc  1413)  allows for the disclosure of
              the username that owns any  process  connected  via
              TCP,  even if that process didn't initiate the con-
              nection. So you can, for example,  connect  to  the
              http  port  and then use identd to find out whether
              the server is running as root.  This  can  only  be
              done  with a full TCP connection to the target port
              (i.e. the -sT scanning option).  When -I  is  used,
              the  remote  host's identd is queried for each open
              port found.  Obviously this won't work if the  host
              is not running identd.

       -f     This option causes the requested SYN, FIN, XMAS, or
              NULL scan 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. My favorite sniffer  segmentation  faulted
              immediately  upon receiving the first 36-byte frag-
              ment. After that comes a 24 byte  one!  While  this
              method  won't  get  by packet filters and firewalls
              that  queue  all  IP  fragments  (like   the   CON-
              FIG_IP_ALWAYS_DEFRAG  option  in the Linux kernel),
              some networks can't afford the performance hit this
              causes and thus leave it disabled.

              Note  that I do not yet have this option working on
              all systems.  It works fine for my Linux,  FreeBSD,
              and  OpenBSD  boxes  and  some people have reported
              success with other *NIX variants.

       -v     Verbose mode.  This is a highly recommended  option
              and  it  gives  out  more information about what is
              going on.  You can use it twice for greater effect.
              Use  -d a couple of times if you really want to get
              of  nmap  usage  options.  As you may have noticed,
              this man page is not exactly a 'quick reference' :)

       -o <logfilename>
              This  logs  the  results  of  your scans in a human
              readable form into the file you specify as an argu-
              ment.

       -m <logfilename>
              This  logs  the  results of your scans in a machine
              parseable form into the  file  you  specify  as  an
              argument.   You can give -m the argument '-' (with-
              out quotes) to shoot output into stdout (for  shell
              pipelines,  etc).   In this case normal output will
              be suppressed.  Watch out for error messages if you
              use this (they will still go to stderr).

       -i <inputfilename>
              Reads target specifications from the file specified
              RATHER than from the command line.  The file should
              contain  a  list  of  host  or  network expressions
              seperated by spaces,  tabs,  or  newlines.   Use  a
              hyphen  (-)  as  inputfilename  if you want nmap to
              read host expressions from stdin (like at  the  end
              of  a  pipe).  See the section target specification
              for more information on the  expressions  you  fill
              the file with.

       -p <port ranges>
              This  option specifies what ports you want to spec-
              ify. For example '-p 23' will only try port  23  of
              the target host(s).  ports greater than 60000.  The
              default is to scan all ports between 1 and 1024  as
              well as any ports listed in the services file which
              comes with nmap.

       -F Fast scan mode.
              Specifies that you only  wish  to  scan  for  ports
              listed  in the services file which comes with nmap.
              This is obviously much  faster  than  scanning  all
              65535 ports on a host.

       -D <decoy1 [,decoy2][,ME],...>
              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 extremely effective
              optionally  use 'ME' as one of the decoys to repre-
              sent the position you want your IP  address  to  be
              used.   If  your  put  'ME'  in the 6th position or
              later, some common port  scan  detectors  (such  as
              Solar  Designer's excellent scanlogd) are unlikeley
              to show your IP address at all.  If you  don't  use
              'ME', nmap will put you in a random position.

              Note  that the hosts you use as decoys should be up
              or you might accidently  SYN  flood  your  targets.
              Also it will be pretty easy to determine which host
              is scanning if only one is actually up on the  net-
              work.   You  might want to use IP addresses instead
              of names (so the decoy networks don't  see  you  in
              their nameserver logs).

              Also  note that some (stupid) "port scan detectors"
              will firewall/deny routing to  hosts  that  attempt
              port scans.  Thus you might inadvertantly cause the
              machine you scan  to  lose  connectivity  with  the
              decoy machines you are using.  This could cause the
              target machines major problems  if  the  decoy  is,
              say,  its  internet  gateway  or  even "localhost".
              Thus you might want to be careful of  this  option.
              The  real  moral  of the story is that detectors of
              spoofable port scans should not take action against
              the  machine  that  seems  like it is port scanning
              them.  It could just be a decoy!

              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 ).

              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, although many (currently most)  do
              not restrict spoofed IP packets at all.

       -S <IP_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 your 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!  This is not  a  sup-
              ported usage (or the main purpose) of this flag.  I
              accusing others of port scanning  them.   -e  would
              generally be required for this sort of usage.

       -e <interface>
              Tells nmap what interface to send and receive pack-
              ets on.  Nmap should be able to detect this but  it
              will tell you if it cannot.

       -g <portnumber>
              Sets  the  source  port number used in scans.  Many
              naive firewall and packet filter installations make
              an  exception in their ruleset to allow DNS (53) or
              FTP-DATA (20) packets to come through and establish
              a  connection.   Obviously this completely subverts
              the  security  advantages  of  the  firewall  since
              intruders can just masquerade as FTP or DNS by mod-
              ifying their source port.  Obviously for a UDP scan
              you should try 53 first and TCP scans should try 20
              before 53.  Note that this is  only  a  request  --
              nmap  will honor it only if and when it is able to.
              For example, you can't do TCP ISN sampling all from
              one host:port to one host:port, so nmap changes the
              source port even if you used -g.

              Be aware that there is a small performance  penalty
              on  some  scans  for  using  this option, because I
              sometimes store useful information  in  the  source
              port number.

       -M <max sockets>
              Sets  the  maximum  number  of sockets that will be
              used in parallel for  a  TCP  connect()  scan  (the
              default).   This  is useful to slow down the scan a
              little bit  and  avoid  crashing  remote  machines.
              Another  approach is to use -sS, which is generally
              easier for machines to handle.

       Target specification
              Everything that isn't an option  (or  option  argu-
              ment)  in nmap is treated as a target host specifi-
              cation.  The simplest case is listing single  host-
              names  or IP addresses on the command line.  If you
              want to scan a subnet  of  IP  addresses,  you  can
              append '/mask' to the hostname or IP address.  mask
              must be between 0 (scan the whole internet) and  32
              (scan  the single host specified).  Use /24 to scan
              a class 'C' address and /16 for a class 'B'.

              Nmap also has a more powerful notation  which  lets
              you  specify  an  IP address using lists/ranges for
              each element.  Thus you can scan  the  whole  class
              'B' network 128.210.*.* by specifying '128.210.*.*'
              you can use the  mask  notation:  '128.210.0.0/16'.
              These  are  all  equivalent.   If you use astericts
              ('*'), remember that most  shells  require  you  to
              escape  them with back slashes or protect them with
              quotes.

              Another interesting thing to do is slice the Inter-
              net  the  other  way.   Instead of scanning all the
              hosts in a class  'B',  scan  '*.*.5.6-7'  to  scan
              every  IP  address  that ends in .5.6 or .5.7  Pick
              your own numbers.  For more information on specify-
              ing hosts to scan, see the examples section.



EXAMPLES

       Here are some examples of using nmap, from simple and nor-
       mal to a little more complex/esoteric.  Note  that  actual
       numbers  and  some  actual  domain  names are used to make
       things more concrete.  In their place you  should  substi-
       tute  addresses/names  from  your  own  network.  I do not
       think portscanning other networks is illegal;  nor  should
       portscans  be  construed  by  others as an attack.  I have
       scanned  hundreds  of  thousands  of  machines  and   have
       received  only  one  complaint.  But I am not a lawyer and
       some (anal) people may be annoyed  by  nmap  probes.   Get
       permission first or use at your own risk.

       nmap -v target.example.com

       This  option  scans  all reserved TCP ports on the machine
       target.example.com .  The -v means turn on verbose mode.

       nmap -sS -O target.example.com/24

       Launches a stealth SYN scan against each machine  that  is
       up out of the 255 machines on class 'C' where target.exam-
       ple.com resides.  It also tries to determine what  operat-
       ing system is running on each host that is up and running.
       This requires root privileges because of the SYN scan  and
       the OS detection.

       nmap -sX -p 22,53,110,143,4564 128.210.*.1-127

       Sends  an  Xmas tree scan to the first half of each of the
       255 possible 8  bit  subnets  in  the  128.210  class  'B'
       address  space.   We  are  testing whether the systems run
       sshd, DNS, pop3d, imapd, or port  4564.   Note  that  Xmas
       scan  doesn't  work  on Microsoft boxes due to their defi-
       cient TCP stack.  Same goes with CISCO, IRIX,  HP/UX,  and
       BSDI boxes.

       nmap -v -p 80 '*.*.2.3-5'
       interesting to slice up the entire  Internet  and  scan  a
       small  sample from each slice.  This command finds all web
       servers on machines with  IP  addresses  ending  in  .2.3,
       .2.4,  or  .2.5  .   If you are root you might as well add
       -sS.  Also you will find more interesting machines  start-
       ing  at 127. so you might want to use '127-222' instead of
       the first asterict because that section has a greater den-
       sity of interesting machines (IMHO).

       host -l company.com | cut '-d ' -f 4 | ./nmap -v -i -

       Do  a  DNS  zone transfer to find the hosts in company.com
       and then feed the IP addresses to nmap.   The  above  com-
       mands  are  for  my GNU/Linux box.  You may need different
       commands/options on other operating systems.


BUGS

       Bugs?  What bugs?  Send me any that you find.  Patches are
       nice  too  :) Remember to also send in new OS fingerprints
       so we can grow the database.


AUTHOR

       Fyodor <fyodor@dhp.com>


DISTRIBUTION

       The  newest  version  of  nmap  can   be   obtained   from
       http://www.insecure.org/nmap

       nmap is (C) 1997,1998,1999 by Fyodor (fyodor@dhp.com, fyo-
       dor@insecure.org)

       libpcap is also distributed along with nmap.  It is  copy-
       righted  by  Van Jacobson, Craig Leres and Steven McCanne,
       all  of  the Lawrence Berkeley National  Laboratory,  Uni-
       versity  of  California,  Berkeley,  CA.  The version dis-
       tributed with nmap may be modified, pristine  sources  are
       available from ftp://ftp.ee.lbl.gov/libpcap.tar.Z .

       This  program  is  free  software; you can redistribute it
       and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
       License as published by the Free Software Foundation; Ver-
       sion 2.  If you want to license  nmap  under  terms  other
       than  the  GPL,  you can write Fyodor and plead your case,
       but none of the (2-3) attempts at this have been  success-
       ful.

       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  for  more
       details  (it  is in the COPYING file of the nmap distribu-
       tion).

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