Nmap Security Scanner version 3.50 Released

["Gideon T. Rasmussen, CISSP, CISM, CFSO, SCSA" <lists () infostruct net>]

- -----Original Message----- 
From: Fyodor [mailto:fyodor () insecure org] 
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 3:36 PM 
To: bugtraq () securityfocus com 
Subject: Nmap Security Scanner 3.50 Released 


- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 

Hello Bugtraq, 

I am pleased to announce the immediate, free availability of the Nmap 
Security Scanner version 3.50 from http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ . 
Actually it was released a few weeks back, but I wanted to ensure it 
is actually stable . 

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is an open source utility for network 
exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan 
large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses 
raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on 
the network, what services (application name and version) they are 
offering, what operating system (and OS version) they are running, 
what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other 
characteristics. Nmap runs on most types of computers, including 
Linux/BSD/Mac OS X, and Windows. Both console and graphical versions 
are available. Nmap is free software, available with full source code 
under the terms of the GNU GPL. 

To reduce Bugtraq traffic, I rarely post more than one Nmap 
announcement per year. The last time was Nmap 3.00 in 2002. To keep 
up with all new versions and other Nmap-related announcements, you are 
invited to join the nmap-hackers list by sending a blank email to 
nmap-hackers-subscribe () insecure org . Or read the archives at 
http://seclists.org . 

CHANGES 

Nmap has undergone many substantial changes since 3.00 and we 
recommend that all current users upgrade. Improvements from 41 
intermediate releases have gone into 3.50. Here are a list of the most 
important advantages (For a much more detailed list, see 
http://www.insecure.org/nmap/nmap_changelog.html ): 

o An advanced service/version detection system was added after months 
of private development. Now instead of using a simple nmap-services 
table lookup to determine a port's likely purpose, Nmap will (if 
asked) interrogate that TCP or UDP port to determine what service is 
really listening. In many cases it can determine the application 
name and version number as well. IPv6, SSL encryption, and SunRPC 
program number brute forcing are all supported. Thanks to a huge 
number of contributors, the database now contains more than a 
thousand signatures, representing 180 unique service protocols from 
acap, afp, and aim to xml-rpc, zebedee, and zebra. 

o The OS detection database has also improved dramatically. There are 
now 1,121 fingerprints in the DB (from 700 in 3.30). Most recently 
added were Linux 2.6.X, Mac OS X up to 10.3.2 (Panther), OpenBSD 3.4 
(normal and pf "scrub all"), FreeBSD 5.2, the latest Windows 
Longhorn warez, and Cisco PIX 6.3.3. As usual, there are a ton of 
new consumer devices from ubiquitous D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear 
broadband routers to a number of new IP phones including the Cisco 
devices commonly used by Vonage. 

o MS Windows support has improved substantially. Newer features such 
as version detection are supported, and the Windows port is also 
faster and more stable. 

o Mac OS X is now fully supported 

o SCO Corporation of Lindon, Utah (formerly Caldera) has lately taken 
to an extortion campaign of demanding license fees from Linux users 
for code that they themselves knowingly distributed under the terms 
of the GNU GPL. They have also refused to accept the GPL, claiming 
that some preposterous theory of theirs makes it invalid (and even 
unconstitutional)! Meanwhile they have distributed GPL-licensed Nmap 
in (at least) their "Supplemental Open Source CD". In response to 
these blatant violations, and in accordance with section 4 of the 
GPL, we terminated SCO's rights to redistribute any versions of Nmap 
in any of their products, including (without limitation) OpenLinux, 
Skunkware, OpenServer, and UNIXWare. We have also stopped supporting 
the OpenServer and UNIXWare platforms. 

o Major changes were made to the NmapFE UNIX GUI. It now uses tabs and 
supports all of the major Nmap command-line options. Most of this 
work was done by Peter Marschall (peter(a)adpm.de). 

o Nmap output is more concise and prettier, thanks to a new 
NmapOutputTable class that reduces extraneous whitespace. This makes 
it easier to read, and also leaves more room for version info and 
possibly future enhancements. 

o Major parts of the codebase have been rewritten. Nmap now compiles 
with C++ rather than ANSI C, and it lightly uses the Standard 
Template Library (STL). The excellent libpcre (Perl Compatible 
Regular Expressions) library has been added, as has a custom 
parallel socket library (nsock). Libpcap has been updated to version 
0.7.2, and the latest autoconf version is being used. 

o Every one of the OS fingerprints was examined to normalize the 
descriptions. I also looked up what all of the devices are (thanks 
E*Bay and Google!). Results like "Nexland ISB Pro800 Turbo" and 
"Siemens 300E Release 6.5" are much more useful when followed by 
"cable modem" and "business phone system" 

o Added a new classification system to nmap-os-fingerprints. In 
addition to the standard text description, each entry is now 
classified by vendor name (e.g. Sun), underlying OS (e.g. Solaris), 
OS generation (e.g. 7), and device type ("general purpose", router, 
switch, game console, etc). This can be useful if you want to (say) 
locate and eliminate the SCO systems on a network, or find the 
wireless access points (WAPs) by scanning from the wired side. 

o Nmap will now sometimes guess the remote operating system in the "no 
exact matches" case, even if you don't use the secret --osscan_guess 
or --fuzzy options. 

o Nmap now compiles under Amiga thanks to patches sent by Diego 
Casorran (dcr8520(a)amiga.org). 

o Added UDP-based "ping" scanning. The -PU option can take an optional 
portlist like the TCP "ping" options (-PS, -PA), but it sends a UDP 
packet to the targets and expects hosts that are up to reply with a 
port unreachable (or possibly a UDP response if the port is 
open). This one is likely to work best against closed ports, since 
many open ports don't respond to empty requests. 

o The random IP input option (-iR) now takes an argument specifying 
how many IPs you want to scan (e.g. -iR 1000). This reduces the risk 
of forgetting about a scan and leaving it running all night, then 
waking up to angry mail from your ISP . Specify 0 for the old 
never-ending scan behavior. 

o Made substantial changes to the SYN/connect()/Window scanning 
algorithms for improved speeds, especially against heavily filtered 
hosts. Also made numerous improvements to the timing behavior of 
"-T Aggressive" (same as -T4) scans. -T4 is now recommended for regular 
use by users on broadband or direct ethernet connections. One scan 
against a firewalled host that took 556 seconds with 3.15BETA2 now 
takes only 41 seconds with Nmap 3.50 and the -T4 option. 

o Added support for a brand new "port" that many people have never 
scanned before! UDP & TCP "port 0" (and IP protocol 0) are now 
permitted if you specify 0 explicitly. An argument like "-p -40" 
would still scan ports 1-40. Unlike ports, protocol 0 IS now scanned 
by default. This now works for ping probes too (e.g., -PS, -PA). 

o Applied patch by Martin Kluge (martin(a)elxsi.info) which adds --ttl 
option, which sets the outgoing IPv4 TTL field in packets sent via 
all raw scan types (including ping scans and OS detection). A TTL of 
0 is supported, and even tends to work on a LAN: 

14:17:19.474293 192.168.0.42.60214 > 192.168.0.40.135: S 326:326(0) [ttl 
0] 
14:17:19.474456 192.168.0.40.135 > 192.168.0.42.60214: S 280:280(0) ack 
326 (ttl 128) 

o added a new --datadir command line option which allows you to 
specify the highest priority directory for Nmap data files 
nmap-services, nmap-os-fingerprints, and nmap-rpc. Any files which 
aren't in the given dir, will be searched for in the $NMAPDIR 
environmental variable, ~/nmap/, a compiled in data directory 
(e.g. /usr/share/nmap), and finally the current directory. 

o To emphasize the highly professional nature of Nmap, all instances 
of "fucked up" in error message text has been changed to "b0rked". 

o IPv6 is now supported for many of the most important scan types, 
including TCP scan (-sT), connect()-style ping scan (-sP), list scan 
(-sL), and version detection. Just specify the -6 option and the 
IPv6 numbers or DNS names. Netmask notation is not currently 
supported -- I'm not sure how useful it is for IPv6, where even 
petty end users may be allocated trillions of addresses (/80). 

o Multiple TCP/UDP ports can now be specified for the "ping scanning 
phase". You can also now specify multiple ping types (e.g. UDP, TCP 
SYN, ICMP echo request, and TCP ACK). So you can now do combinations 
such as "-PS22,53,80 -PT113 -PN -PE" in order to increase your odds 
of passing through strict filters. 

o Reworked the "ping scan" algorithm (used for any scan except -P0 or 
-sL) to be more robust in the face of low-bandwidth and congested 
connections. This also improves reliability in the multi-port and 
multi-type ping cases described below. 

o Applied patch by Max Schubert (nmap(a)webwizarddesign.com) which 
adds an add-port XML tag whenever a new port is found open when Nmap 
is running in verbose mode. The new tag looks like: [addport 
state="open" portid="22" protocol="tcp"/] I also updated 
docs/nmap.dtd to recognize this new tag. 

o Added --packet_trace option, which tells Nmap to display all of the 
packets it sends and receives in a format similar to tcpdump. I 
mostly added this for debugging purposes, but people wishing to 
learn how Nmap works or for experts wanting to ensure Nmap is doing 
exactly what they expect. 

o Hundreds of more minor features, bugfixes, and portability enhancements. 

MOVING FORWARD: 

With this "stable" version out of the way, we plan to dive headfirst 
into the next development cycle. Many exciting features are in the 
queue, including better multi-host parallelization, an OS detection 
overhaul, and further version scanning features, such as intensity 
levels. I am also working on a book describing Nmap, from port 
scanning basics for novices to the types of packet crafting used by 
advanced hackers. Much of this book will be made available for free 
online. A few chapters should be available very soon. For the latest 
news on Nmap and the book, consider joining the nmap-hackers list 
discussed up top. 

DOWNLOAD: 

- - From http://www.insecure.org/nmap 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: 

I would like to acknowledge and thank the many people who contributed 
ideas and/or code to this release. Special thanks go out to A. Jones, 
Albert Chin-A-Young, Alex Volkov, Al Smith, Amy Hennings, Andy 
Lutomirski, Annalee Newitz, Axel Krauth, Axel Nennker, Ayamura 
Kikuchi, Blue Boar, Brian Hatch, Chad Loder, Crayden Mantelium, Curt 
Wilson, Darren Reed, Dean Bennett, Diego Casorran, Dmitry V. Levin, 
Dragos Ruiu, Dug Song, Eric S. Raymond, Fejed, Florin Andrei, Frank 
Berger, Fyodor Yarochkin, Gabriel L. Somlo, Gisle Vanem, Guido van 
Rooij, HellNBack, HD Moore, Hubert Feyrer, Jan Roger Wilkens, Jari 
Ruusu, Jaroslav Sladek, Javier Kohen, Jay Freeman (Saurik), Jeff 
Nathan, jerickson_at_inphonic, Jochen Erwied, Josef 'Jupp' Schugt, 
Juho Schultz, Justin A., Kevin Davis, Kirby Kuehl, Kronos, Lance 
Spitzner, Lionel CONS, MadHat, Maik Pfeil, Marc Ruef, Mario Manno, 
Marius Strobl, Martin Kluge, Matt Burnett, Matthieu Verbert, Matt 
Selsky, Max Schubert, Max Vision, Michael Davis, Mikael Mannstrom, 
Miscelerious Options, Mugz, Niels Heinen, Osamah Abuoun, Peter 
Marschall, Petter Reinholdtsen, Phix, Pope_at_undersec, Przemek 
Galczewski, R. Anderson, Rain.Forest.Puppy, ray_at_24hoursecurity, 
Remi Denis-Courmont, Rob Foehl, Russel Miller, Ryan Lowe, Scott 
Egbert, Sebastien Blanchet, Seth Master, Shawn Wallis, Simple Nomad, 
Solar Designer, Solar Eclipse, Ste Jones, Stephen Bishop, Tammy 
Rathbun, Tom Duffy, Tom Rune Flo, van Hauser, Wei Jiang, William 
McVey, Will Saxon, Yeti, and everyone I forgot . 

And of course I would also like to thank the thousands of people who 
have submitted OS and service/version fingerprints, as well as 
everyone who has found and reported bugs or suggested features. 

Cheers, 
Fyodor 




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