Re: Nmap On Android

[Vlatko Kosturjak <kost () linux hr>]

On 02/04/2011 05:06 PM, luke jeter wrote:
> I've been talking about it since the end of last summer, but haven't had the
> time to actually do anything, yet. The previous version I'm aware of
> installed a pre-compiled Nmap binary and then ran it. I think a better
> alternative is to leverage the Android NDK -- but other than getting the NDK
> on my machine, I haven't really looked into the viability of this. I've been
> given a 'green light' to do this as my project for one of my classes this
> semester, so maybe I'll finally get something done, but it won't be very
> robust and I plan to ignore the 'Androids don't have root access and can't
> make raw packets' issue.

Nmap is ported on Android, so there's not too much left job to do on NDK
side. The binary works as root user as well as normal user. Of course,
if you don't have root access, you'll be limited what type of scanning
you can perform.

> Something that was suggested to me last year, is that simply porting Nmap to
> Android probably isn't a big enough project for GSoC (isn't the target ~1000
> hours?). My suggestion would be to think of ways to extend or enhance it, as
> well. Hopefully by May I'll be able to provide something for someone to
> build on, or at least give an example of one implementation alternative.

My personal opinion (not Nmap official!) about further Android
advancement and what can be done as SoC (i.e. they are big enough):
- develop official Nmap Android frontend to Nmap binary. In this case
Android GUI would execute Nmap binary and parse results. Maybe John
Holden is willing to donate some of his interface code?
- proceed with "librarization" of Nmap: i.e. make library of nmap. I
think I saw this already on Nmap Gsoc page, but don't know why nobody
pick that. This would help in other efforts like rainmap/zenmap beside
Android. And we would skip this nasty bug as well:
http://www.crystax.net/trac/ticket/1
(As this bug is only present with binaries(!) and not libraries(!))
In this case, Java GUI would call nmap through library using Java Native
Interface (JNI).

Kost
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