RE: ARP scanning bug in nmap?

[Mike C <check () imjc com>]

Nmap (or anything else) can't scan an Ethernet device unless it gets an ARP
reply - without the ARP reply - it wouldn't know the MAC address to send
anything to - an ARP reply is a pre-requisite to any sort of (non-broadcast)
IP communication.

Doesn't explain how come Nessus worked though....

You probably need to supply more information to get an answer - like OS you
were scanning from, exact nmap options used, ideally listings of the ARP
table and maybe a packet trace....

Regards,

Mike



-----Original Message-----
From: nmap-dev-bounces () insecure org [mailto:nmap-dev-bounces () insecure org]
On Behalf Of RaMatkal
Sent: 20 March 2006 09:18
To: nmap-dev () insecure org
Subject: ARP scanning bug in nmap?


Firstly, great work on nmap!!

I was performing a pen-test on a clients network a few days ago and was
having a few problems with nmap 4.00.....

i was sitting on the same subnet as a wireless device i was trying to
scan....

wireless ip was something like 10.51.20.20/16

and my ip was 10.51.25.25/16 though i was not attached to the wireless
network....

I could ping the wireless device with no problems but when i tried to scan
the device with the usual nmap -sS -vv -O it came back with an error saying
no ARP replies were found...

I think i read somewhere that the new version of nmap first does an ARP scan
if the device u want to scan sits on the same local network (which i
was)....but for some reason nmap was not recognising the ARP
responses.....(i wander if this has to do with the fact that i was on the
same subnet as the wireless device but i was not attached to the wireless
network...ie maybe only the access point replies to the ARP requests when it
is attached to a switch and not the wireless devices communicating through
it...)

anyways, i tried using the -P0 to turn off the Ping and ARP scan but nmap
still could not scan the device and said an ARP response was not returned
from the device....

in short i tried several methods to scan the device but all failed with the
same error...

However, when i scanned the device with Nessus i had no problems....several
open ports were found...

Is there a way to switch off the ARP scan like you can switch off the ping
scan with -P0

Thanks very much...sorry for the long email, and great work again!

RaMatkal


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