NMAP Penetration Testing Tool

NMAP Penetration Testing Tool

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a popular open-source tool used for network discovery and security auditing. It is mainly used to discover hosts and services on a computer network, as well as for penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. The tool can identify live hosts, open ports, operating systems, services, and their versions, among other network details.

NMAP is a valuable tool for penetration testers. NMAP is a tool used to perform network scans. The penetration tester can collect information about the target using this tool scans. For example, the OS the target is running, open ports on the target, services running on the target machine, etc.

Please note that it is against the Cyber Laws to run the tool against the systems and domains that you do not own. Make sure you run this tool in lab environments.

Nmap Flags

nmap IP

/> nmap 127.0.0.1

This allows the tester to know the open ports on the target.

nmap -sn IP

nmap -sn 127.0.0.1

This flag is used to check if the target is up or not.

nmap -O IP

For example

/> nmap -O 127.0.0.1

To know the operating system of the target machine. To scan a specific port on the target machine. For example, if the target machine is a web server
tester would like to know the port 80 or 8080 port status.

/> nmap -p 80 127.0.0.1