Priveon Labs Security Blog

Nmap 5 was recently released and while Nmap has always been known as an incredible scanning and footprinting tool, it's clear that Fyodor and other project contributors have morphed Nmap into an entire suite.

Nmap now includes Ncat - a tool that shares some similarities with Netcat but adds many other features:

• Connect to other services
• Act as a listener (similar to Netcat's -l option)
• Connection brokering - this is where anything sent to one Ncat host is sent to all other Ncat hosts. This includes file transfers and even a multi-user adhoc chat option. Encryption is supported as well through built-in SSL.
• Command execution (--exec)
• Access control - that's right, you can allow certain hosts to connect and deny others while acting as a listener
• Proxying through SOCKS 4 or HTTP proxies
• File transfers including compression on the fly and encryption when used with the SSL option
• Chaining Ncat connections
• Diagnostic Service Emulation (qotd, TCP/UDP discard servers, etc.)
• And more!

I've barely scratched the surface - the full Ncat user guide can be found here.

Another tool added to the new "Nmap suite" is the Ndiff scan comparison tool. This tool allows you to scan your network at regular intervals and view differences between scans.

Other enhancements to Nmap 5 include speed improvements, improved documentation, and a scripting engine.

What are you waiting for? Go get it!