Nmap Development mailing list archives
Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes
From: Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>
Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 17:42:00 -0800
On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 05:01:30PM -0600, Tom Sellers wrote:
All, I have attached an updated version of the nmap XML XSL transform document, nmap.xsl.
Hi Tom. I'm delighted to see you working on this, as I believe the XSL could be extremely useful to Nmap users if it is improved. I just did some sample scans with the latest SVN version of nmap.xsl. Since you asked for feedback, here are a bunch of suggestions: o The host index at the very top of the file is rather unwieldy. For example, a scan of scanme.nmap.org shows "64.13.134.52 / scanme.nmap.org / scanme.nmap.org". In this case, scanme.nmap.org is repeated twice. But even if it wasn't, I think we should limit it to one host name like Nmap does in its host scan report header. We should probably use the same algorithm Nmap does to decide which hostname to use. In addition, it is hard to mentally parse when the IP and host name(s) for a single host are separated with "/", and different hosts with "|". Those look too similar. I think it would be better to use this traditional Nmap-style format: "corn02.Stanford.EDU (171.67.216.67)" o A red color is used in the host index to denote down hosts, and in the port tables to denote closed ports. Red is often used in reports to highlight the most interesting/important information, but closed ports and down hosts are among the least interesting entries. So I think they should either use a default color (e.g. plain black) or maybe more subtle gray or something could be used. o I'm not sure that the traceroute table needs to be green. Maybe just plain white would be fine? o It might be worth migrating "runstats" and "scan info" sections which appear at the bottom into the "scan summary" section which appears at the top. Also, I think the presentation of those sections could be improved. Right now it is just a list of short facts like "171 host(s) offline". You might be able to save vertical space by placing the information in a table, or using a sentence format like Nmap does ("Nmap done at Sun Nov 14 14:55:55 2010 -- 259 IP addresses (88 hosts up) scanned in 2029.02 seconds"). o There is a lot of information in Nmap XML which we don't show in normal Nmap results because it is rarely useful. But since XML isn't meant to be read by humans, there is little harm in including obscure details like the exact TCP timestamp sequence and IPID sequence values. Just because these are in the XML doesn't mean they need to be in the HTML. For example, does the average user really care about the remote OS guess "reference fingerprint line number"? In general, I don't think the HTML needs to prevent more by default than normal Nmap output shows you. But one big advantage of the HTML over normal Nmap output is that you could consider making a details expander for each host. Then the user could click "+" (or whatever) to see the really obscure stuff. There could even be an "expand all details" button up top. And for the stuff we do want to show, it would be nice to think about whether it can be presented in a better way than an enumerated list of short facts directly from the XML. o Related to the idea above: you could consider omitting the closed ports and down hosts by default, unless the user clicked a button to add them (there could be a controls/customization section near the top, I suppose). I'm starting to wonder if Nmap should even include closed and filtered ports in the host table by default--maybe they should just be listed. o Nmap has a neat way to show how traceroute results differ from that of a previously shown host. If that information is exported to the XML, it might be better to show by default than the full table for each host (it could have a link to the reference host). Even better might be an option to show either the full table or the differences. Like you could show the differences by default, with an expander to show the full table if desired. If Nmap doesn't export this information in the XML, maybe we should. o There is a section titled "remote operating system guess" which should probably be "guesses" since it usually contains several values. It might be nice if it used text more like Nmap, noting that there are no exact matches but here is a list of the closest ones. And I don't think you need to give things like "reference fingerprint line number: 9336" for each entry. Although it looks like this section is used if a result is exact too. o It would be nice to see OS detection (operating system and/or system type) icons for introducing hosts. But a challenge is that we'd prefer not to load them off a 3rd party site like nmap.org because I suppose that could be a privacy risk. It would tell that a user from the IP was reading an Nmap scan report and it contains at least one of the device type or operating system identified by the logo. Isn't there a way to include small images inline by including the hex data? o This would be a big job, but I think it would be a neat feature if you could click a control and change the viewing mode from "list of hosts with the services accessible on them" to a big list of services listing the IP they represent. They would probably be sorted by port number or service name, allowing someone to easily (for example) find all the SSH servers. Then again, maybe at this point they should just use Zenmap. Anyway, I think your recent improvements are good ones and I'd love to see further improvements in this XSL. Cheers, Fyodor _______________________________________________ Sent through the nmap-dev mailing list http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev Archived at http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/
Current thread:
- Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Tom Sellers (Nov 11)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes David Fifield (Nov 11)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Tom Sellers (Nov 14)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Tom Sellers (Nov 14)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes David Fifield (Nov 14)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Tom Sellers (Nov 14)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Fyodor (Nov 14)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Tom Sellers (Nov 22)
- Re: Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes Fyodor (Dec 08)