Nmap 2.3BETA12

[Fyodor <fyodor () dhp com>]

Happy new year everyone!  I hope you participated in some of the wild
parties last night!

I am also please to announce Nmap 2.3BETA12.  This release fixes all the
Nmap Y2K problems <G>.

Actually it contains some cool new features.  One is interactive mode,
which gives you an interactive Nmap prompt and allows you easily launch
multiple scans (either synchronously or in the background).  This is
useful for people who scan from multi-user systems -- they often want to
test their security without letting everyone else on the system knowing
exactly what systems they are scanning.  Use --interactive to activate
this mode and then type 'h' for help.

This version also allows hosts to be scanned in random order rather than
sequentially.  This can make the scans harder to detect and less likely to
trigger IDS signatures (especially when combined with the timing
mechanisms to do a very slow scan).

Another cool feature is -iR which tells Nmap to pick random IPs to scan.  
It will never terminate.  For example, 'nmap -sS -p 21,80,139 -iR' will
generate a list of random ftp/web/netbios sites you can examine if you are
really bored someday.

Also the .rpm versions have been fixed in several ways and split so that
core nmap and nmapfe can be downloaded separately.

Quick links:
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-2.3BETA12.tgz
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-2.3BETA12-1.i386.rpm
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-frontend-2.3BETA12-1.i386.rpm
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/dist/nmap-2.3BETA12-1.src.rpm

Here is a more comprehensive list of the changes in this version:

-- Added interactive mode which adds convenience for managing nmap
   sessions and also enhances privacy.  Get to it with --interactive
   and then type 'h' for help.

-- Added/modified many fingerprints including the latest 2.3.X Linux
   releases, the latest Win2000 builds, the Apple Airport Wireless
   device, and several dozen more.

-- Migrated to RPM .spec file sent in by Tim Powers
   <timp () redhat com>.  That is the file they will be using to package
   Nmap with the power tools CD in the next Redhat release.  The most
   important changes are that Nmap (only the RPM version) now installs
   in /usr/* instead of /usr/local/* and the frontend is now
   dynamically linked with GTK and comes in a separate rpm.

-- The -i (input from list) option has been deprecated.  From now on
   you should use -iL <filename> to read from a list or -iR to have
   Nmap generate random IPs to scan.  This -iR option is new.

-- The -o and -m options have been deprecated.  From now on, you
   should use -oN for normal (human readable) output and -oM for
   machine parseable output.  At some point I might add -oH (HTML
   output) or -oSK (sKr|pt |<iDdi3 0uTPut).

-- Added --randomize_hosts option, which causes hosts be be scanned in
   non-sequential order.  This makes scans less conspicuous.  For
   efficiency reasons, the hosts are chopped into groups of 2048 and
   then each group is internally shuffled (the groups still go in
   order).

-- Rearranged the help ('nmap -h' or 'nmap' or 'nmap --help') screen
   to be shorter (37 -> 23 lines!) and include some of the new
   features of this release.  The man page was updated as well.

-- Fixed longstanding bug where nmap -sS mylocalnetwork/24 would not
   successfully scan the host running nmap.

-- Internal improvements to make scanning faster with -i (input list)
   or when you specify multiple machines on the command line.

-- Uses faster GCD algorithm and fixed several typos (sent in by Peter
   Kosinar).

-- Provide more information in machine/human readable output files
   (start time, end time, RPC program name, Nmap version number)

-- Killed the -A option (if you don't know what that is then you won't
   miss it.  In fact, even if you do know what it is you won't miss
   it.)

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

Cheers,
Fyodor

--
Fyodor                            'finger pgp () pgp insecure org | pgp -fka'
Frustrated by firewalls?          Try nmap: http://www.insecure.org/nmap/
"The percentage of users running Windows NT Workstation 4.0 whose PCs
 stopped working more than once a month was less than half that of Windows 
 95 users."-- microsoft.com/ntworkstation/overview/Reliability/Highest.asp