After all, you need to tell nmap what you want to scan! The official nmap community offers you a sample target website to scan:. By default, you only need to specify the target. Scan type and options are in square brackets because they are optional. In fact, the syntax for the command is just this: nmap This is especially true for basics scans. Nmap tutorial: scanning with nmap A first scanĭespite its immense power, using nmap is simple. Mac users will find executable binaries in the same link of Windows users. If you want zenmap as well (as you should), go to the official website of nmap. Depending on your Linux version, you can run sudo apt-get install nmap or yum install nmap. Luckily, both nmap and zenmap are free and open source!įor Linux users, using your package manager is enough to get you running. Once you install them, you are ready to use nmap in the prompt, and you can search for ZenMap within your installed programs. These are the executables that will install both nmap and zenmap. If you are a Microsoft Windows user, you can download the binaries from the official nmap website. ZenMap can actually visualize the topology of the network graphically, and you can click on each host to gather more information. However, its best enrichment to nmap is about the output. With zenmap, you can construct nmap queries easily, and run them from a graphical interface. ZenMap is a graphical interface to facilitate the use of nmap. In this nmap tutorial, we will see how to use options of this command to better control the scan. In the terminal or prompt, you can use the nmap command to launch the scan. With this precious information, he can use targeted attacks and exploit known vulnerabilities. Knowing services, versions, and operating systems is essential for the attacker. If you are lucky, nmap will even detect the operating system of each device. Using advanced techniques, it can identify what services are running on each host and even their version. To start, we can reconstruct the topology, identifying all the devices in the network. As we will see later in this nmap tutorial, you can use this tool to have a clear picture of the network. In fact, nmap is a tool that allows you to create a detailed map of a network.

Nmap stands for “network mapper”, and this is pretty explanatory.

In this nmap tutorial, we will see how to use nmap and its visual companion, zenmap. Even if you don’t want to do penetration testing, you should know how to use this tool. Several tools allow you to perform reconnaissance, but the most famous is nmap. This aims to understand how the system works, and what are possible vulnerabilities. Yet, all the attacks starts from the same point: reconnaissance. Preparing attacks to systems and networks is complex.

Zenmap port scanner