Re: Nmap XML HowTo

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 08:48:09AM +0530, Amit Kumar Saha wrote:
> As of now,my project is in a "Planning & Learning " stage.  A main aim
> of this project is also to aid people in understaning the Nmap XML
> output better and how it can be used for useful work. The HOW-TO was a
> result of that.

Hi Amit.  I think the HOWTO is a great idea!  And version 0.1 is a
good start.

> The next thing I intend to do is design a command line utility to
> extract various information from a Nmap XML file.( I had posted to the
> list about features desirable in such a utility, but did not find many
> takers of the idea). So I am currently pondering about how useful the
> idea is.

Maybe instead of designing a command-line utility specifically for
Nmap XML, you can demonstrate in your HOWTO how to use existing
generic XML command-line utilities to parse Nmap output.  I think many
Nmap users (including me to some extent) fall back on Nmap grepable
output because we grew up with command-line tools like awk, sed, cut,
etc. for parsing plaintext.  But parsing Nmap XML output using
command-line XML tools to grab fields with XPath and the like can lead
to command-lines which are shorter, easier to write, and a hundred
times easier to read than a big string of piped sed/awk/etc.

But I do see the value in other sorts of special-purpose Nmap XML
command-line utilities (and/or libraries).  They could do things like
take 2 Nmap XML output files and produce an XML file describing the
differences.  Tools like UMIT or PBNJ or simpler cron jobs could all
share such a common utility/library.

Cheers,
-F

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