Nmap Development mailing list archives
Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes - Changes since last commit on Nov 14th
From: Tom Sellers <nmap () fadedcode net>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2010 12:57:55 -0600
Fyodor, Here is a summary of the changes I have made to the XSL since the last SVN commit on Nov 14th. This includes the updates from my last email to the list on Nov 22. Please look at the progress so far and let me know if I am on the right track. I have attached a copy of the updated nmap.xsl file. There are two other attachments, both starting with test_20101127. They are the same file, but one has been renamed with a .txt extension to improve the odds of it getting through. HTML files seem to be stripped. Here is the current status: 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)" The host index has now been changed to the format of "hostname (IP address)". As far as the hostname portion preference is given to the user supplied hostname. 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. The color for downed ports has been changed to light gray. The display for them has been changed, see comments below. o I'm not sure that the traceroute table needs to be green. Maybe just plain white would be fine? Traceroute data is current green because each of the hops is up. The XSL has code to deal with down and unresponsive hops. The hops that don't respond are not output to the XML file even though they are displayed on the console. Test case: sudo nmap -sP --traceroute -oX test.traceroute.xml www.cnn.com Question: Is this as expected / desired? The traceroute information, when present, has been moved to a click-to-expand div element that is collapsed by default. When the document is printed this table is expanded. 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"). Done, it turns out that the string that Nmap outputs when it finishes is included in the XML. 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. This data has been moved to a new section named "Misc Metrics". This is a click-to-expand div element that is collapsed by default. When the document is printed this table is expanded. 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. The information on down hosts has been moved to a click-to-expand div element that is collapsed by default. When the document is printed this table is expanded. The display for closed and filtered ports has been changed. By default the information for closed and filtered ports is filtered from the tables. The column header now has clickable links that will display each. The links indicate the counts of each type (closed vs filtered) in the current table so that the user can see at a glance if there is anything hidden. There is also a floating box in the lower right hand corner of the display that contains links that will will toggle showing and hiding of ports in these states for the entire document. This floating box contains a link to the top of the document as well. When printing the document the printout will reflect the current status (hidden vs unhidden) of the ports. The clickable links themselves are also not output when printing. Question: Does the table of ports need to be changed so that closed and and filtered ports are always printed as opposed to printing in the format that is currently displayed? My concern here is processes that automatically convert documents, for example to PDF format. 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. Nmap does not export this data to the XML. I haven't made any changes to this. 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. 'Remote Operating System Guesses' changed to 'Remote Operating System Detection' The fingerprint reference line has been removed. The OS output has been modified to be more like the nmap output "OS match (accuracy)" which is more compact. The OS Fingerprint block will be displayed if present and the OS is NOT identified. If the fingerprint is present in the XML due to -v or -d AND the OS WAS identified then it will be provided in a collapsed block which the user can click to view. These blocks will be EXCLUDED from print media. Question: Does the OS fingerprint need to be printed at all? The only scenario that I could think of where this would be useful would be if the file was 'printed' to digital media such as PDF where the user can still copy and paste the data for submission. 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? I looked into this (using img src="data: ... ) and could not get Firefox to display the icon. Internet Explorer 8 (!) would display it just fine. According to Wikipedia most of IE's support for this tag is limited and started with 7, but it seems to work the best. Most other browsers appear to support it though. I will work some more on this. 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. True, Zenmap may be best at this point but I will try to figure out a good way to do this, though it might be cleaner to do with a different XSL. Misc Changes: Added HTML Doctype of HTML 4.01 Strict, this tidies up parsing and clarifies rendering behavior. Various changes to formatting to improve readability of output when it is printed. Changed how host index HTML anchors are created in order to deal with a warning about the name attribute being deprecated. Refactored host os detection portused and osmatch sections in order to deal with HTML / XML tag nesting issues. Scaninfo and runstats code has been removed altogether. Reformatted most of the document using 2 space indents instead of tabs to try to be more consistent with the rest of the project. Please let me know what you think... Tom
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nmap.xsl
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test_20101127.txt
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- Feedback requested - XML XSL transform changes - Changes since last commit on Nov 14th Tom Sellers (Nov 27)