Re: Ncrack: -iX, -iN input from Nmap

[ithilgore <ithilgore.ryu.l () gmail com>]

David Fifield wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 11:37:16PM +0300, ithilgore wrote:
> > David Fifield wrote:
> > > Opening an XML file in Zenmap and saving it again changes the file
> > > format enough that it's not recognized.
> > >
> > > $ ncrack -iX zenmap.xml -v -v localhost
> > > -iX file doesn't seem to be in Nmap's XML output format option -oX <filename>!
> > I corrected that issue too, but there is another more serious problem.
> > Zenmap's XML file doesn't use newlines between certain tag sections,
> > something which Nmap does and Ncrack's XML parser uses in order to
> > function. Is there any reason for this inconsistency between Zenmap
> > and Nmap? I would suggest that Zenmap's XML file has the same format
> > as Nmap with the newlines in place.
>
> It's just what is produced naturally from Python's
> xml.sax.saxutils.XMLGenerator. I think it's ugly with no newlines so
> maybe we should find another way to write it with newlines and
> indentation. But it's XML in any case, so it shouldn't matter to XML
> processors.

That is true, but doing that manually would result in much more complicate
code and I don't want to write a full-fledged XML parser from scratch just
for the light needs of Ncrack. 

> Maybe it's time to do another search for a suitable XML parser? There
> are a lot of other things that don't change the meaning of the XML but
> would confuse a pattern-matching parser, such as character encoding and
> entity expansion. That said, I'm willing to change the way Zenmap writes
> XML if someone has a better way, because Nmap and Zenmap are going to be
> by far the biggest sources of input to Ncrack. In other words, an
> incomplete working solution soon is better than a perfect solution
> farther in the future.

Well, although it is tempting to use a ready solution, I think that Ncrack's 
parsing needs are pretty light to be worth the overhead of including a separate
XML parser. Anyway, if you make Zenmap's XML output appear the same way as Nmap XML file
(with the newlines in place - nothing else is necessary), then -iX will work out of
the box. Also, as you said Zenmap's XML output (although it will probably not be read by a human)
will look far better with the newlines.

-- ithilgore

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