Re: Getting started with NSE

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 11:00:35PM +0000, Brandon Enright wrote:
> Diman Todorov did the initial work.  See:
> http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2006/q2/136
>
> And this thread for a discussion of languages:
> http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2006/q2/227

Good finds.  Sometimes it can be fun to read the old archived Nmap
discussions with the benefit of hindsight.  The nmap-hackers archives
go back to 1998:

http://seclists.org/nmap-hackers/1998/index.html

Its interesting to read that page from a "where are they now"
perspective.  For example, HD Moore is now famous in security, Max
Vision is in jail for the foreseeable future, Jordan Ritter went quiet
on the mailing list to help start Napster and then Cloudmark.  Matt
Franz wrote some great security tools such as Trinux, and eventually
joined Tenable to manage Nessus Training (he's no longer there).
Rain.forest.puppy quit security and moved to a big ranch in the
country, though lately he's been attending cons again.  Fyodor Grave
(CyberPsychotic, also known as "Snort Fyodor") is still around and
people still regularly confuse him and me).  I saw Ryan Russell at RSA
a few weeks ago.  I don't know what happened to Lamont Granquist.  I
think all the list posters in 1998 were men, but now the list is only
about 98% men :).

Pardon me for the off-topic rambling and navel gazing.

> But in short, when Lua was chosen I think most people had a quizzical
> look on their face.  I suspect most people weren't sure if it was the
> "right" choice or not.  I think hindsight has shown us though that it
> *was* and *is* the right choice.  I think Ron and Kris and others have
> been very happy with Lua.

Absolutely!

> Many people don't know this, but Lua is the embedded language in World
> of War Craft and in Second Life.

And, in the network security realm, Lua is also used in Wireshark and
Snort!  In fact, Gerald Combs and I are doing a
Lua-in-Wireshark-and-Nmap presentation at Sharkfest in June.

> When you know another language by heart like Perl or Python you can't
> help but wish everything were in that language ;-)  I think everyone
> who has used NSE will tell you it is worth learning something new
> though.

Yep.  Even a Perl guy like me has grown to appreciate Lua.

Cheers,
-F
_______________________________________________
Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list
http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev
Archived at http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/