Nmap Development mailing list archives
Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines
From: David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:10:53 -0700
On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 12:23:55PM -0500, Michael Head wrote:
I've been using nmap to collect information for internal asset discovery and verification processes. I'm using the OS detection, service scan, and full complement of service probes, and I'm finding that the quality of OS fingerprints achievable diminishes substantially when I scan more than a few hosts (from any of several Windows (XP, 2003) installations). When I scan each host individually with a single call to nmap, those same target systems return much improved fingerprints.
Thanks for the thorough report. We haven't seen this before. How long have you been running these scans? Did the OS detection work previously, and suddenly stop, or has it always had this problem? Did you use any previous version of Nmap before using 4.76? It would be helpful if you could find an old log file that either does or does not have the OS detection problem. You mention the problem occurs on Windows XP and 2003. If you run scans from any other platforms, does it happen on the others too? Download Nmap 4.68 from http://nmap.org/dist/nmap-4.68-setup.exe and see if that shows the same wrong behavior. If it does not, that will narrow the list of changes we have to examine. If it does, then the problem might be caused by a change outside of Nmap, as it seems this would have been noticed in the six months since 4.68 was released. David Fifield _______________________________________________ Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev Archived at http://SecLists.Org
Current thread:
- OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Michael Head (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Brandon Enright (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Michael Head (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Michael Head (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Michael Head (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 17)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Rob Nicholls (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Rob Nicholls (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Brandon Enright (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines David Fifield (Dec 18)
- Re: OS fingerprint extraction quality when scanning a large number of machines Brandon Enright (Dec 17)