Feature Request: --update

[Hari Sekhon <hpsekhon () googlemail com>]

I would very much like it if nmap could update it's signature database 
for fingerprinting remote hosts.

For example

nmap --update
fetching latest fingerprints....
done

I have been using nmap for a few years and to my knowledge this isn't a 
current feature (please correct me if I am wrong. I also just did "nmap 
--help|grep update" and got nothing).
When using an older nmap it fails to fingerprint systems as well as a 
modern nmap. I'm currently using nmap 4.20.

The reason I ask for this feature is not because I'm too lazy to upgrade 
to the latest version but because on livecds and such you are sometimes 
using old versions on nmap and it would be excellent if you could just 
nmap --update and get the latest sigs. For example, Knoppix STD has nmap 
3.48 on it and rather than installing a new nmap every time you reboot, 
it would be better to just nmap --update && nmap [options] target.

Really nmap --update could do a lot more than just sigs, but also 
nmap-service-probes and other nmap-* files in /usr/share/nmap or 
/usr/local/share/nmap, perhaps even upgrading the whole thing in place 
including the nmap binary so the second run is using a fully updated 
nmap! (but that really is up to you if you wanted to be that nice - 
however that would be Awesome. )

I know that the fingerprint db has recently been changed but I'm not 
sure how this affects this feature request.


Thanks for reading.

-h

-- 

Hari Sekhon


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