nmap Mac OS X Firewire Issue

[Julian Berdych <julian () berdych ca>]

Hi,

  The latest version of nmap (4.90RC1) still craps out on any Mac OS  
X system that has FireWire ports (see the nmap output below). This is  
pretty serious, as all Macs these days have FireWire ports, even the  
low-end MacBooks.

This issue was first described two years ago in nmap 4.21 (see the  
posting at http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2007/q2/0432.html). There's a  
"quick hack" for the source code described there, although in my  
opinion, a more elegant approach that applies to all platforms is to  
gracefully print a warning message for any network interfaces that  
don't have MAC addresses, and only quit if zero bona-fide interfaces  
are found.

One could theoretically lobotomize one's iMac or MacBook by removing  
the FireWire-related kernel extensions and thus eliminating the fw0/ 
fw1 devices, but losing external hard-drive and DV-camera support is a  
very high price to pay for working around this nmap problem.

Thanks for looking into this,

   ...Julian.

$ sudo nmap -sV -T4 -O -F --version-light 192.168.0.189
Starting Nmap 4.90RC1 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-07-15 10:35 EDT
getinterfaces: Failed to obtain MAC address for ethernet interface (fw0)
QUITTING!

MacOS 10.5.7, hardware: 20" aluminum iMac 2007 (comes with 2x  
FireWire-800 interfaces)

Julian Berdych • Wireless & Real-Time Systems Consultant
T  514.448.1712 • julian () berdych ca




_______________________________________________
Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list
http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev
Archived at http://SecLists.Org