Gordon Lyon (known in the Internet by his other name, “Fyodor”) is the man who maintains the leading Nmap Security scan tool. The project started in 1997 as a mere port scanner for Linux and bearing no version number. Due to its popularity and high demand, they started developing the product. The growing rate of users made Nmap to devise a GUI version called "Zenmap", which was originally derived from Umit, a developed between the 2005 and 2006 Nmap Summer of Code, sponsored by Google.
Nmap can perform network inventory, list a service history, identify firewall types and pocket filers, and detect the uptime of the system and the OS. Its huge database may identify the OS fingerprints of the target system easily and reliably.
You can save your Nmap analysis output for later use, or just keep it as a reference. With its port scanning functionality, Nmap can find out which ports are open (both TCP and UDP) in the target systems. Depending on the switch used, you can really do “a brute force method” to actually identify the weaknesses of a system. Once you have done that you can close the unnecessary ports, so that you or your organization do or does not become any hacker’s next victim.
With the extremely flexible Nmap Script Engine (NSE), you can write your own scripts to customize your scanning processes. With the NSE you can really check Vulnerability Exploitations in the target systems, that is really a breakthrough.
Finally, you can find and identify "any device" connected to your network using Nmap - the only requirement is that this device has an IP address belonging to the network.
As a security product, it has received various awards from leading journals and websites.
v6.25 [Nov 27, 2012]
--[NSE] Added mysql-enum script which enumerates valid mysql server
usernames [Aleksandar Nikolic]
--[Nsock] Reworked the logging infrastructure t--make it more flexible
and consistent. Updated nmap, nping and ncat accordingly. Nsock log level
can now be adjusted at runtime by pressing d/D in nmap.
[Henri Doreau, David Fifield]
--[NSE] Fixed scripts using unconnected UDP sockets. The bug was
reported by Dhiru Kholia. [David Fifield]
--[NSE] Added structured output t--http-git.nse. [Alex Weber]
--[NSE] Added murmur-version by Marin Maržić. This gets teh server
version and other information for Murmur, the server for the Mumble
VoIP system.
--Added a corresponding UDP payload for Murmur. [Marin Maržić]
--[Zenmap] Fixed a crash that could be caused by opening the About
dialog, using the window manager t--close it, and opening it again.
This was reported by Yashartha Chaturvedi and Jordan Schroeder.
[David Fifield]
--[Ncat] Made test-addrset.sh exit with nonzer--status if any tests
fail. This in turn causes "make check" t--fail if any tests fail.
[Andreas Stieger]
--Fixed compilation with --without-liblua. The bug was reported by
Rick Farina, Nikos Chantziaras, and Alex Turbov. [David Fifield]
--Fixed CRC32c calculation (as used in SCTP scans) on 64-bit platforms. [Pontus Andersson]
--[NSE] Added multicast group name output to
broadcast-igmp-discovery.nse. [Vasily Kulikov]
--[NSE] Added new fingerprints for http-enum: Sitecore, Moodle, typo3,
SquirrelMail, RoundCube. [Jesper Kückelhahn]
--[NSE] Added CPE t--smb-os-discovery output.
--[Ncat] Fixed the printing of warning messages for large arguments to
the -i and -w options. [Michal Hlavinka]
--[Ncat] Shut down the write part of connected sockets in listen mode
when stdin hits EOF, just as was already done in connect mode.
[Michal Hlavinka]
--[Zenmap] Removed a crashing error that could happen when canceling a
"Print t--File" on Windows:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "zenmapGUI\MainWindow.pyo", line 831, in _print_cb
File "zenmapGUI\Print.pyo", line 156, in run_print_operation
GError: Error from StartDoc
This bug was reported by Imre Adácsi. [David Fifield]
--Added some new checks for failed library calls. [Bill Parker]
A program that lets you easily manage your laptop connections to WiMAX networks
