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NMAP(1)			     Nmap Reference Guide		       NMAP(1)

NAME
       nmap - Network exploration tool and security / port scanner

SYNOPSIS
       nmap [Scan Type...] [Options] {target specification}

DESCRIPTION
       Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is an open source tool for network exploration
       and security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks,
       although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets
       in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network,
       what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering,
       what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of
       packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other
       characteristics. While Nmap is commonly used for security audits, many
       systems and network administrators find it useful for routine tasks
       such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and
       monitoring host or service uptime.

       The output from Nmap is a list of scanned targets, with supplemental
       information on each depending on the options used. Key among that
       information is the “interesting ports table”..  That table lists the
       port number and protocol, service name, and state. The state is either
       open, filtered, closed, or unfiltered.  Open.  means that an
       application on the target machine is listening for connections/packets
       on that port.  Filtered.	 means that a firewall, filter, or other
       network obstacle is blocking the port so that Nmap cannot tell whether
       it is open or closed.  Closed.  ports have no application listening on
       them, though they could open up at any time. Ports are classified as
       unfiltered.  when they are responsive to Nmap's probes, but Nmap cannot
       determine whether they are open or closed. Nmap reports the state
       combinations open|filtered.  and closed|filtered.  when it cannot
       determine which of the two states describe a port. The port table may
       also include software version details when version detection has been
       requested. When an IP protocol scan is requested (-sO), Nmap provides
       information on supported IP protocols rather than listening ports.

       In addition to the interesting ports table, Nmap can provide further
       information on targets, including reverse DNS names, operating system
       guesses, device types, and MAC addresses.

       A typical Nmap scan is shown in Example 1. The only Nmap arguments used
       in this example are -A, to enable OS and version detection, script
       scanning, and traceroute; -T4 for faster execution; and then the two
       target hostnames.

       Example 1. A representative Nmap scan

	   # nmap -A -T4 scanme.nmap.org

	   Nmap scan report for scanme.nmap.org (74.207.244.221)
	   Host is up (0.029s latency).
	   rDNS record for 74.207.244.221: li86-221.members.linode.com
	   Not shown: 995 closed ports
	   PORT	    STATE    SERVICE	 VERSION
	   22/tcp   open     ssh	 OpenSSH 5.3p1 Debian 3ubuntu7 (protocol 2.0)
	   | ssh-hostkey: 1024 8d:60:f1:7c:ca:b7:3d:0a:d6:67:54:9d:69:d9:b9:dd (DSA)
	   |_2048 79:f8:09:ac:d4:e2:32:42:10:49:d3:bd:20:82:85:ec (RSA)
	   80/tcp   open     http	 Apache httpd 2.2.14 ((Ubuntu))
	   |_http-title: Go ahead and ScanMe!
	   646/tcp  filtered ldp
	   1720/tcp filtered H.323/Q.931
	   9929/tcp open     nping-echo	 Nping echo
	   Device type: general purpose
	   Running: Linux 2.6.X
	   OS CPE: cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel:2.6.39
	   OS details: Linux 2.6.39
	   Network Distance: 11 hops
	   Service Info: OS: Linux; CPE: cpe:/o:linux:kernel

	   TRACEROUTE (using port 53/tcp)
	   HOP RTT	ADDRESS
	   [Cut first 10 hops for brevity]
	   11  17.65 ms li86-221.members.linode.com (74.207.244.221)

	   Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 14.40 seconds

       The newest version of Nmap can be obtained from http://nmap.org. The
       newest version of this man page is available at
       http://nmap.org/book/man.html.  It is also included as a chapter of
       Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network
       Discovery and Security Scanning (see http://nmap.org/book/).

OPTIONS SUMMARY
       This options summary is printed when Nmap is run with no arguments, and
       the latest version is always available at
       https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/docs/nmap.usage.txt. It helps people remember
       the most common options, but is no substitute for the in-depth
       documentation in the rest of this manual. Some obscure options aren't
       even included here.

	   Nmap 6.25 ( http://nmap.org )
	   Usage: nmap [Scan Type(s)] [Options] {target specification}
	   TARGET SPECIFICATION:
	     Can pass hostnames, IP addresses, networks, etc.
	     Ex: scanme.nmap.org, microsoft.com/24, 192.168.0.1; 10.0.0-255.1-254
	     -iL <inputfilename>: Input from list of hosts/networks
	     -iR <num hosts>: Choose random targets
	     --exclude <host1[,host2][,host3],...>: Exclude hosts/networks
	     --excludefile <exclude_file>: Exclude list from file
	   HOST DISCOVERY:
	     -sL: List Scan - simply list targets to scan
	     -sn: Ping Scan - disable port scan
	     -Pn: Treat all hosts as online -- skip host discovery
	     -PS/PA/PU/PY[portlist]: TCP SYN/ACK, UDP or SCTP discovery to given ports
	     -PE/PP/PM: ICMP echo, timestamp, and netmask request discovery probes
	     -PO[protocol list]: IP Protocol Ping
	     -n/-R: Never do DNS resolution/Always resolve [default: sometimes]
	     --dns-servers <serv1[,serv2],...>: Specify custom DNS servers
	     --system-dns: Use OS's DNS resolver
	     --traceroute: Trace hop path to each host
	   SCAN TECHNIQUES:
	     -sS/sT/sA/sW/sM: TCP SYN/Connect()/ACK/Window/Maimon scans
	     -sU: UDP Scan
	     -sN/sF/sX: TCP Null, FIN, and Xmas scans
	     --scanflags <flags>: Customize TCP scan flags
	     -sI <zombie host[:probeport]>: Idle scan
	     -sY/sZ: SCTP INIT/COOKIE-ECHO scans
	     -sO: IP protocol scan
	     -b <FTP relay host>: FTP bounce scan
	   PORT SPECIFICATION AND SCAN ORDER:
	     -p <port ranges>: Only scan specified ports
	       Ex: -p22; -p1-65535; -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080,S:9
	     -F: Fast mode - Scan fewer ports than the default scan
	     -r: Scan ports consecutively - don't randomize
	     --top-ports <number>: Scan <number> most common ports
	     --port-ratio <ratio>: Scan ports more common than <ratio>
	   SERVICE/VERSION DETECTION:
	     -sV: Probe open ports to determine service/version info
	     --version-intensity <level>: Set from 0 (light) to 9 (try all probes)
	     --version-light: Limit to most likely probes (intensity 2)
	     --version-all: Try every single probe (intensity 9)
	     --version-trace: Show detailed version scan activity (for debugging)
	   SCRIPT SCAN:
	     -sC: equivalent to --script=default
	     --script=<Lua scripts>: <Lua scripts> is a comma separated list of
		      directories, script-files or script-categories
	     --script-args=<n1=v1,[n2=v2,...]>: provide arguments to scripts
	     --script-args-file=filename: provide NSE script args in a file
	     --script-trace: Show all data sent and received
	     --script-updatedb: Update the script database.
	     --script-help=<Lua scripts>: Show help about scripts.
		      <Lua scripts> is a comma separted list of script-files or
		      script-categories.
	   OS DETECTION:
	     -O: Enable OS detection
	     --osscan-limit: Limit OS detection to promising targets
	     --osscan-guess: Guess OS more aggressively
	   TIMING AND PERFORMANCE:
	     Options which take <time> are in seconds, or append 'ms' (milliseconds),
	     's' (seconds), 'm' (minutes), or 'h' (hours) to the value (e.g. 30m).
	     -T<0-5>: Set timing template (higher is faster)
	     --min-hostgroup/max-hostgroup <size>: Parallel host scan group sizes
	     --min-parallelism/max-parallelism <numprobes>: Probe parallelization
	     --min-rtt-timeout/max-rtt-timeout/initial-rtt-timeout <time>: Specifies
		 probe round trip time.
	     --max-retries <tries>: Caps number of port scan probe retransmissions.
	     --host-timeout <time>: Give up on target after this long
	     --scan-delay/--max-scan-delay <time>: Adjust delay between probes
	     --min-rate <number>: Send packets no slower than <number> per second
	     --max-rate <number>: Send packets no faster than <number> per second
	   FIREWALL/IDS EVASION AND SPOOFING:
	     -f; --mtu <val>: fragment packets (optionally w/given MTU)
	     -D <decoy1,decoy2[,ME],...>: Cloak a scan with decoys
	     -S <IP_Address>: Spoof source address
	     -e <iface>: Use specified interface
	     -g/--source-port <portnum>: Use given port number
	     --data-length <num>: Append random data to sent packets
	     --ip-options <options>: Send packets with specified ip options
	     --ttl <val>: Set IP time-to-live field
	     --spoof-mac <mac address/prefix/vendor name>: Spoof your MAC address
	     --badsum: Send packets with a bogus TCP/UDP/SCTP checksum
	   OUTPUT:
	     -oN/-oX/-oS/-oG <file>: Output scan in normal, XML, s|<rIpt kIddi3,
		and Grepable format, respectively, to the given filename.
	     -oA <basename>: Output in the three major formats at once
	     -v: Increase verbosity level (use -vv or more for greater effect)
	     -d: Increase debugging level (use -dd or more for greater effect)
	     --reason: Display the reason a port is in a particular state
	     --open: Only show open (or possibly open) ports
	     --packet-trace: Show all packets sent and received
	     --iflist: Print host interfaces and routes (for debugging)
	     --log-errors: Log errors/warnings to the normal-format output file
	     --append-output: Append to rather than clobber specified output files
	     --resume <filename>: Resume an aborted scan
	     --stylesheet <path/URL>: XSL stylesheet to transform XML output to HTML
	     --webxml: Reference stylesheet from Nmap.Org for more portable XML
	     --no-stylesheet: Prevent associating of XSL stylesheet w/XML output
	   MISC:
	     -6: Enable IPv6 scanning
	     -A: Enable OS detection, version detection, script scanning, and traceroute
	     --datadir <dirname>: Specify custom Nmap data file location
	     --send-eth/--send-ip: Send using raw ethernet frames or IP packets
	     --privileged: Assume that the user is fully privileged
	     --unprivileged: Assume the user lacks raw socket privileges
	     -V: Print version number
	     -h: Print this help summary page.
	   EXAMPLES:
	     nmap -v -A scanme.nmap.org
	     nmap -v -sn 192.168.0.0/16 10.0.0.0/8
	     nmap -v -iR 10000 -Pn -p 80
	   SEE THE MAN PAGE (http://nmap.org/book/man.html) FOR MORE OPTIONS AND EXAMPLES

TARGET SPECIFICATION
       Everything on the Nmap command-line that isn't an option (or option
       argument) is treated as a target host specification. The simplest case
       is to specify a target IP address or hostname for scanning.

       Sometimes you wish to scan a whole network of adjacent hosts. For this,
       Nmap supports CIDR-style.  addressing. You can append /numbits to an
       IPv4 address or hostname and Nmap will scan every IP address for which
       the first numbits are the same as for the reference IP or hostname
       given. For example, 192.168.10.0/24 would scan the 256 hosts between
       192.168.10.0 (binary: 11000000 10101000 00001010 00000000) and
       192.168.10.255 (binary: 11000000 10101000 00001010 11111111),
       inclusive.  192.168.10.40/24 would scan exactly the same targets. Given
       that the host scanme.nmap.org.  is at the IP address 64.13.134.52, the
       specification scanme.nmap.org/16 would scan the 65,536 IP addresses
       between 64.13.0.0 and 64.13.255.255. The smallest allowed value is /0,
       which targets the whole Internet. The largest value is /32, which scans
       just the named host or IP address because all address bits are fixed.

       CIDR notation is short but not always flexible enough. For example, you
       might want to scan 192.168.0.0/16 but skip any IPs ending with .0 or
       .255 because they may be used as subnet network and broadcast
       addresses. Nmap supports this through octet range addressing. Rather
       than specify a normal IP address, you can specify a comma-separated
       list of numbers or ranges for each octet. For example,
       192.168.0-255.1-254 will skip all addresses in the range that end in .0
       or .255, and 192.168.3-5,7.1 will scan the four addresses 192.168.3.1,
       192.168.4.1, 192.168.5.1, and 192.168.7.1. Either side of a range may
       be omitted; the default values are 0 on the left and 255 on the right.
       Using - by itself is the same as 0-255, but remember to use 0- in the
       first octet so the target specification doesn't look like a
       command-line option. Ranges need not be limited to the final octets:
       the specifier 0-255.0-255.13.37 will perform an Internet-wide scan for
       all IP addresses ending in 13.37. This sort of broad sampling can be
       useful for Internet surveys and research.

       IPv6 addresses can only be specified by their fully qualified IPv6
       address or hostname. CIDR and octet ranges aren't yet supported for
       IPv6.

       IPv6 addresses with non-global scope need to have a zone ID suffix. On
       Unix systems, this is a percent sign followed by an interface name; a
       complete address might be fe80::a8bb:ccff:fedd:eeff%eth0. On Windows,
       use an interface index number in place of an interface name:
       fe80::a8bb:ccff:fedd:eeff%1. You can see a list of interface indexes by
       running the command netsh.exe interface ipv6 show interface.

       Nmap accepts multiple host specifications on the command line, and they
       don't need to be the same type. The command nmap scanme.nmap.org
       192.168.0.0/8 10.0.0,1,3-7.- does what you would expect.

       While targets are usually specified on the command lines, the following
       options are also available to control target selection:

       -iL inputfilename (Input from list) .
	   Reads target specifications from inputfilename. Passing a huge list
	   of hosts is often awkward on the command line, yet it is a common
	   desire. For example, your DHCP server might export a list of 10,000
	   current leases that you wish to scan. Or maybe you want to scan all
	   IP addresses except for those to locate hosts using unauthorized
	   static IP addresses. Simply generate the list of hosts to scan and
	   pass that filename to Nmap as an argument to the -iL option.
	   Entries can be in any of the formats accepted by Nmap on the
	   command line (IP address, hostname, CIDR, IPv6, or octet ranges).
	   Each entry must be separated by one or more spaces, tabs, or
	   newlines. You can specify a hyphen (-) as the filename if you want
	   Nmap to read hosts from standard input rather than an actual file.

	   The input file may contain comments that start with # and extend to
	   the end of the line.

       -iR num hosts (Choose random targets) .
	   For Internet-wide surveys and other research, you may want to
	   choose targets at random. The num hosts argument tells Nmap how
	   many IPs to generate. Undesirable IPs such as those in certain
	   private, multicast, or unallocated address ranges are automatically
	   skipped. The argument 0 can be specified for a never-ending scan.
	   Keep in mind that some network administrators bristle at
	   unauthorized scans of their networks and may complain. Use this
	   option at your own risk! If you find yourself really bored one
	   rainy afternoon, try the command nmap -Pn -sS -p 80 -iR 0 --open.
	   to locate random web servers for browsing.

       --exclude host1[,host2[,...]] (Exclude hosts/networks) .
	   Specifies a comma-separated list of targets to be excluded from the
	   scan even if they are part of the overall network range you
	   specify. The list you pass in uses normal Nmap syntax, so it can
	   include hostnames, CIDR netblocks, octet ranges, etc. This can be
	   useful when the network you wish to scan includes untouchable
	   mission-critical servers, systems that are known to react adversely
	   to port scans, or subnets administered by other people.

       --excludefile exclude_file (Exclude list from file) .
	   This offers the same functionality as the --exclude option, except
	   that the excluded targets are provided in a newline-, space-, or
	   tab-delimited exclude_file rather than on the command line.

	   The exclude file may contain comments that start with # and extend
	   to the end of the line.

HOST DISCOVERY
       One of the very first steps in any network reconnaissance mission is to
       reduce a (sometimes huge) set of IP ranges into a list of active or
       interesting hosts. Scanning every port of every single IP address is
       slow and usually unnecessary. Of course what makes a host interesting
       depends greatly on the scan purposes. Network administrators may only
       be interested in hosts running a certain service, while security
       auditors may care about every single device with an IP address. An
       administrator may be comfortable using just an ICMP ping to locate
       hosts on his internal network, while an external penetration tester may
       use a diverse set of dozens of probes in an attempt to evade firewall
       restrictions.

       Because host discovery needs are so diverse, Nmap offers a wide variety
       of options for customizing the techniques used. Host discovery is
       sometimes called ping scan, but it goes well beyond the simple ICMP
       echo request packets associated with the ubiquitous ping tool. Users
       can skip the ping step entirely with a list scan (-sL) or by disabling
       ping (-Pn), or engage the network with arbitrary combinations of
       multi-port TCP SYN/ACK, UDP, SCTP INIT and ICMP probes. The goal of
       these probes is to solicit responses which demonstrate that an IP
       address is actually active (is being used by a host or network device).
       On many networks, only a small percentage of IP addresses are active at
       any given time. This is particularly common with private address space
       such as 10.0.0.0/8. That network has 16 million IPs, but I have seen it
       used by companies with less than a thousand machines. Host discovery
       can find those machines in a sparsely allocated sea of IP addresses.

       If no host discovery options are given, Nmap sends an ICMP echo
       request, a TCP SYN packet to port 443, a TCP ACK packet to port 80, and
       an ICMP timestamp request. (For IPv6, the ICMP timestamp request is
       omitted because it is not part of ICMPv6.) These defaults are
       equivalent to the -PE -PS443 -PA80 -PP options. The exceptions to this
       are the ARP (for IPv4) and Neighbor Discovery.  (for IPv6) scans which
       are used for any targets on a local ethernet network. For unprivileged
       Unix shell users, the default probes are a SYN packet to ports 80 and
       443 using the connect system call..  This host discovery is often
       sufficient when scanning local networks, but a more comprehensive set
       of discovery probes is recommended for security auditing.

       The -P* options (which select ping types) can be combined. You can
       increase your odds of penetrating strict firewalls by sending many
       probe types using different TCP ports/flags and ICMP codes. Also note
       that ARP/Neighbor Discovery (-PR).  is done by default against targets
       on a local ethernet network even if you specify other -P* options,
       because it is almost always faster and more effective.

       By default, Nmap does host discovery and then performs a port scan
       against each host it determines is online. This is true even if you
       specify non-default host discovery types such as UDP probes (-PU). Read
       about the -sn option to learn how to perform only host discovery, or
       use -Pn to skip host discovery and port scan all target hosts. The
       following options control host discovery:

       -sL (List Scan) .
	   The list scan is a degenerate form of host discovery that simply
	   lists each host of the network(s) specified, without sending any
	   packets to the target hosts. By default, Nmap still does
	   reverse-DNS resolution on the hosts to learn their names. It is
	   often surprising how much useful information simple hostnames give
	   out. For example, fw.chi is the name of one company's Chicago
	   firewall.  Nmap also reports the total number of IP addresses at
	   the end. The list scan is a good sanity check to ensure that you
	   have proper IP addresses for your targets. If the hosts sport
	   domain names you do not recognize, it is worth investigating
	   further to prevent scanning the wrong company's network.

	   Since the idea is to simply print a list of target hosts, options
	   for higher level functionality such as port scanning, OS detection,
	   or ping scanning cannot be combined with this. If you wish to
	   disable ping scanning while still performing such higher level
	   functionality, read up on the -Pn (skip ping) option.

       -sn (No port scan) .
	   This option tells Nmap not to do a port scan after host discovery,
	   and only print out the available hosts that responded to the scan.
	   This is often known as a “ping scan”, but you can also request that
	   traceroute and NSE host scripts be run. This is by default one step
	   more intrusive than the list scan, and can often be used for the
	   same purposes. It allows light reconnaissance of a target network
	   without attracting much attention. Knowing how many hosts are up is
	   more valuable to attackers than the list provided by list scan of
	   every single IP and host name.

	   Systems administrators often find this option valuable as well. It
	   can easily be used to count available machines on a network or
	   monitor server availability. This is often called a ping sweep, and
	   is more reliable than pinging the broadcast address because many
	   hosts do not reply to broadcast queries.

	   The default host discovery done with -sn consists of an ICMP echo
	   request, TCP SYN to port 443, TCP ACK to port 80, and an ICMP
	   timestamp request by default. When executed by an unprivileged
	   user, only SYN packets are sent (using a connect call) to ports 80
	   and 443 on the target. When a privileged user tries to scan targets
	   on a local ethernet network, ARP requests are used unless --send-ip
	   was specified. The -sn option can be combined with any of the
	   discovery probe types (the -P* options, excluding -Pn) for greater
	   flexibility. If any of those probe type and port number options are
	   used, the default probes are overridden. When strict firewalls are
	   in place between the source host running Nmap and the target
	   network, using those advanced techniques is recommended. Otherwise
	   hosts could be missed when the firewall drops probes or their
	   responses.

	   In previous releases of Nmap, -sn was known as -sP..

       -Pn (No ping) .
	   This option skips the Nmap discovery stage altogether. Normally,
	   Nmap uses this stage to determine active machines for heavier
	   scanning. By default, Nmap only performs heavy probing such as port
	   scans, version detection, or OS detection against hosts that are
	   found to be up. Disabling host discovery with -Pn causes Nmap to
	   attempt the requested scanning functions against every target IP
	   address specified. So if a class B target address space (/16) is
	   specified on the command line, all 65,536 IP addresses are scanned.
	   Proper host discovery is skipped as with the list scan, but instead
	   of stopping and printing the target list, Nmap continues to perform
	   requested functions as if each target IP is active. To skip ping
	   scan and port scan, while still allowing NSE to run, use the two
	   options -Pn -sn together.

	   For machines on a local ethernet network, ARP scanning will still
	   be performed (unless --disable-arp-ping or --send-ip is specified)
	   because Nmap needs MAC addresses to further scan target hosts. In
	   previous versions of Nmap, -Pn was -P0.  and -PN..

       -PS port list (TCP SYN Ping) .
	   This option sends an empty TCP packet with the SYN flag set. The
	   default destination port is 80 (configurable at compile time by
	   changing DEFAULT_TCP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC.  in nmap.h)..	Alternate
	   ports can be specified as a parameter. The syntax is the same as
	   for the -p except that port type specifiers like T: are not
	   allowed. Examples are -PS22 and -PS22-25,80,113,1050,35000. Note
	   that there can be no space between -PS and the port list. If
	   multiple probes are specified they will be sent in parallel.

	   The SYN flag suggests to the remote system that you are attempting
	   to establish a connection. Normally the destination port will be
	   closed, and a RST (reset) packet sent back. If the port happens to
	   be open, the target will take the second step of a TCP
	   three-way-handshake.	 by responding with a SYN/ACK TCP packet. The
	   machine running Nmap then tears down the nascent connection by
	   responding with a RST rather than sending an ACK packet which would
	   complete the three-way-handshake and establish a full connection.
	   The RST packet is sent by the kernel of the machine running Nmap in
	   response to the unexpected SYN/ACK, not by Nmap itself.

	   Nmap does not care whether the port is open or closed. Either the
	   RST or SYN/ACK response discussed previously tell Nmap that the
	   host is available and responsive.

	   On Unix boxes, only the privileged user root.  is generally able to
	   send and receive raw TCP packets..  For unprivileged users, a
	   workaround is automatically employed.  whereby the connect system
	   call is initiated against each target port. This has the effect of
	   sending a SYN packet to the target host, in an attempt to establish
	   a connection. If connect returns with a quick success or an
	   ECONNREFUSED failure, the underlying TCP stack must have received a
	   SYN/ACK or RST and the host is marked available. If the connection
	   attempt is left hanging until a timeout is reached, the host is
	   marked as down.

       -PA port list (TCP ACK Ping) .
	   The TCP ACK ping is quite similar to the just-discussed SYN ping.
	   The difference, as you could likely guess, is that the TCP ACK flag
	   is set instead of the SYN flag. Such an ACK packet purports to be
	   acknowledging data over an established TCP connection, but no such
	   connection exists. So remote hosts should always respond with a RST
	   packet, disclosing their existence in the process.

	   The -PA option uses the same default port as the SYN probe (80) and
	   can also take a list of destination ports in the same format. If an
	   unprivileged user tries this, the connect workaround discussed
	   previously is used. This workaround is imperfect because connect is
	   actually sending a SYN packet rather than an ACK.

	   The reason for offering both SYN and ACK ping probes is to maximize
	   the chances of bypassing firewalls. Many administrators configure
	   routers and other simple firewalls to block incoming SYN packets
	   except for those destined for public services like the company web
	   site or mail server. This prevents other incoming connections to
	   the organization, while allowing users to make unobstructed
	   outgoing connections to the Internet. This non-stateful approach
	   takes up few resources on the firewall/router and is widely
	   supported by hardware and software filters. The Linux
	   Netfilter/iptables.	firewall software offers the --syn convenience
	   option to implement this stateless approach. When stateless
	   firewall rules such as this are in place, SYN ping probes (-PS) are
	   likely to be blocked when sent to closed target ports. In such
	   cases, the ACK probe shines as it cuts right through these rules.

	   Another common type of firewall uses stateful rules that drop
	   unexpected packets. This feature was initially found mostly on
	   high-end firewalls, though it has become much more common over the
	   years. The Linux Netfilter/iptables system supports this through
	   the --state option, which categorizes packets based on connection
	   state. A SYN probe is more likely to work against such a system, as
	   unexpected ACK packets are generally recognized as bogus and
	   dropped. A solution to this quandary is to send both SYN and ACK
	   probes by specifying -PS and -PA.

       -PU port list (UDP Ping) .
	   Another host discovery option is the UDP ping, which sends a UDP
	   packet to the given ports. For most ports, the packet will be
	   empty, though for a few a protocol-specific payload will be sent
	   that is more likely to get a response..  The payload database is
	   described at http://nmap.org/book/nmap-payloads.html.

	   The --data-length.  option can be used to send a fixed-length
	   random payload to every port or (if you specify a value of 0) to
	   disable payloads. You can also disable payloads by specifying
	   --data-length 0.

	   The port list takes the same format as with the previously
	   discussed -PS and -PA options. If no ports are specified, the
	   default is 40125..  This default can be configured at compile-time
	   by changing DEFAULT_UDP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC.  in nmap.h..  A highly
	   uncommon port is used by default because sending to open ports is
	   often undesirable for this particular scan type.

	   Upon hitting a closed port on the target machine, the UDP probe
	   should elicit an ICMP port unreachable packet in return. This
	   signifies to Nmap that the machine is up and available. Many other
	   types of ICMP errors, such as host/network unreachables or TTL
	   exceeded are indicative of a down or unreachable host. A lack of
	   response is also interpreted this way. If an open port is reached,
	   most services simply ignore the empty packet and fail to return any
	   response. This is why the default probe port is 40125, which is
	   highly unlikely to be in use. A few services, such as the Character
	   Generator (chargen) protocol, will respond to an empty UDP packet,
	   and thus disclose to Nmap that the machine is available.

	   The primary advantage of this scan type is that it bypasses
	   firewalls and filters that only screen TCP. For example, I once
	   owned a Linksys BEFW11S4 wireless broadband router. The external
	   interface of this device filtered all TCP ports by default, but UDP
	   probes would still elicit port unreachable messages and thus give
	   away the device.

       -PY port list (SCTP INIT Ping) .
	   This option sends an SCTP packet containing a minimal INIT chunk.
	   The default destination port is 80 (configurable at compile time by
	   changing DEFAULT_SCTP_PROBE_PORT_SPEC.  in nmap.h). Alternate ports
	   can be specified as a parameter. The syntax is the same as for the
	   -p except that port type specifiers like S: are not allowed.
	   Examples are -PY22 and -PY22,80,179,5060. Note that there can be no
	   space between -PY and the port list. If multiple probes are
	   specified they will be sent in parallel.

	   The INIT chunk suggests to the remote system that you are
	   attempting to establish an association. Normally the destination
	   port will be closed, and an ABORT chunk will be sent back. If the
	   port happens to be open, the target will take the second step of an
	   SCTP four-way-handshake.  by responding with an INIT-ACK chunk. If
	   the machine running Nmap has a functional SCTP stack, then it tears
	   down the nascent association by responding with an ABORT chunk
	   rather than sending a COOKIE-ECHO chunk which would be the next
	   step in the four-way-handshake. The ABORT packet is sent by the
	   kernel of the machine running Nmap in response to the unexpected
	   INIT-ACK, not by Nmap itself.

	   Nmap does not care whether the port is open or closed. Either the
	   ABORT or INIT-ACK response discussed previously tell Nmap that the
	   host is available and responsive.

	   On Unix boxes, only the privileged user root.  is generally able to
	   send and receive raw SCTP packets..	Using SCTP INIT Pings is
	   currently not possible for unprivileged users..

       -PE; -PP; -PM (ICMP Ping Types) .
	   In addition to the unusual TCP, UDP and SCTP host discovery types
	   discussed previously, Nmap can send the standard packets sent by
	   the ubiquitous ping program. Nmap sends an ICMP type 8 (echo
	   request) packet to the target IP addresses, expecting a type 0
	   (echo reply) in return from available hosts..  Unfortunately for
	   network explorers, many hosts and firewalls now block these
	   packets, rather than responding as required by RFC 1122[2]..	 For
	   this reason, ICMP-only scans are rarely reliable enough against
	   unknown targets over the Internet. But for system administrators
	   monitoring an internal network, they can be a practical and
	   efficient approach. Use the -PE option to enable this echo request
	   behavior.

	   While echo request is the standard ICMP ping query, Nmap does not
	   stop there. The ICMP standards (RFC 792[3].	and RFC 950[4].	 “a
	   host SHOULD NOT implement these messages”. Timestamp and address
	   mask queries can be sent with the -PP and -PM options,
	   respectively. A timestamp reply (ICMP code 14) or address mask
	   reply (code 18) discloses that the host is available. These two
	   queries can be valuable when administrators specifically block echo
	   request packets while forgetting that other ICMP queries can be
	   used for the same purpose.

       -PO protocol list (IP Protocol Ping) .
	   One of the newer host discovery options is the IP protocol ping,
	   which sends IP packets with the specified protocol number set in
	   their IP header. The protocol list takes the same format as do port
	   lists in the previously discussed TCP, UDP and SCTP host discovery
	   options. If no protocols are specified, the default is to send
	   multiple IP packets for ICMP (protocol 1), IGMP (protocol 2), and
	   IP-in-IP (protocol 4). The default protocols can be configured at
	   compile-time by changing DEFAULT_PROTO_PROBE_PORT_SPEC.  in nmap.h.
	   Note that for the ICMP, IGMP, TCP (protocol 6), UDP (protocol 17)
	   and SCTP (protocol 132), the packets are sent with the proper
	   protocol headers.  while other protocols are sent with no
	   additional data beyond the IP header (unless the --data-length.
	   option is specified).

	   This host discovery method looks for either responses using the
	   same protocol as a probe, or ICMP protocol unreachable messages
	   which signify that the given protocol isn't supported on the
	   destination host. Either type of response signifies that the target
	   host is alive.

       -PR (ARP Ping) .
	   One of the most common Nmap usage scenarios is to scan an ethernet
	   LAN. On most LANs, especially those using private address ranges
	   specified by RFC 1918[5], the vast majority of IP addresses are
	   unused at any given time. When Nmap tries to send a raw IP packet
	   such as an ICMP echo request, the operating system must determine
	   the destination hardware (ARP) address corresponding to the target
	   IP so that it can properly address the ethernet frame. This is
	   often slow and problematic, since operating systems weren't written
	   with the expectation that they would need to do millions of ARP
	   requests against unavailable hosts in a short time period.

	   ARP scan puts Nmap and its optimized algorithms in charge of ARP
	   requests. And if it gets a response back, Nmap doesn't even need to
	   worry about the IP-based ping packets since it already knows the
	   host is up. This makes ARP scan much faster and more reliable than
	   IP-based scans. So it is done by default when scanning ethernet
	   hosts that Nmap detects are on a local ethernet network. Even if
	   different ping types (such as -PE or -PS) are specified, Nmap uses
	   ARP instead for any of the targets which are on the same LAN. If
	   you absolutely don't want to do an ARP scan, specify
	   --disable-arp-ping.

	   For IPv6 (-6 option), -PR uses ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery instead of
	   ARP. Neighbor Discovery, defined in RFC 4861, can be seen as the
	   IPv6 equivalent of ARP.

       --disable-arp-ping (No ARP or ND Ping) .
	   Nmap normally does ARP or IPv6 Neighbor Discovery (ND) discovery of
	   locally connected ethernet hosts, even if other host discovery
	   options such as -Pn or -PE are used. To disable this implicit
	   behavior, use the --disable-arp-ping option.

	   The default behavior is normally faster, but this option is useful
	   on networks using proxy ARP, in which a router speculatively
	   replies to all ARP requests, making every target appear to be up
	   according to ARP scan.

       --traceroute (Trace path to host) .
	   Traceroutes are performed post-scan using information from the scan
	   results to determine the port and protocol most likely to reach the
	   target. It works with all scan types except connect scans (-sT) and
	   idle scans (-sI). All traces use Nmap's dynamic timing model and
	   are performed in parallel.

	   Traceroute works by sending packets with a low TTL (time-to-live)
	   in an attempt to elicit ICMP Time Exceeded messages from
	   intermediate hops between the scanner and the target host. Standard
	   traceroute implementations start with a TTL of 1 and increment the
	   TTL until the destination host is reached. Nmap's traceroute starts
	   with a high TTL and then decrements the TTL until it reaches zero.
	   Doing it backwards lets Nmap employ clever caching algorithms to
	   speed up traces over multiple hosts. On average Nmap sends 5–10
	   fewer packets per host, depending on network conditions. If a
	   single subnet is being scanned (i.e. 192.168.0.0/24) Nmap may only
	   have to send two packets to most hosts.

       -n (No DNS resolution) .
	   Tells Nmap to never do reverse DNS resolution on the active IP
	   addresses it finds. Since DNS can be slow even with Nmap's built-in
	   parallel stub resolver, this option can slash scanning times.

       -R (DNS resolution for all targets) .
	   Tells Nmap to always do reverse DNS resolution on the target IP
	   addresses. Normally reverse DNS is only performed against
	   responsive (online) hosts.

       --system-dns (Use system DNS resolver) .
	   By default, Nmap resolves IP addresses by sending queries directly
	   to the name servers configured on your host and then listening for
	   responses. Many requests (often dozens) are performed in parallel
	   to improve performance. Specify this option to use your system
	   resolver instead (one IP at a time via the getnameinfo call). This
	   is slower and rarely useful unless you find a bug in the Nmap
	   parallel resolver (please let us know if you do). The system
	   resolver is always used for IPv6 scans.

       --dns-servers server1[,server2[,...]]  (Servers to use for reverse DNS
       queries) .
	   By default, Nmap determines your DNS servers (for rDNS resolution)
	   from your resolv.conf file (Unix) or the Registry (Win32).
	   Alternatively, you may use this option to specify alternate
	   servers. This option is not honored if you are using --system-dns
	   or an IPv6 scan. Using multiple DNS servers is often faster,
	   especially if you choose authoritative servers for your target IP
	   space. This option can also improve stealth, as your requests can
	   be bounced off just about any recursive DNS server on the Internet.

	   This option also comes in handy when scanning private networks.
	   Sometimes only a few name servers provide proper rDNS information,
	   and you may not even know where they are. You can scan the network
	   for port 53 (perhaps with version detection), then try Nmap list
	   scans (-sL) specifying each name server one at a time with
	   --dns-servers until you find one which works.

PORT SCANNING BASICS
       While Nmap has grown in functionality over the years, it began as an
       efficient port scanner, and that remains its core function. The simple
       command nmap target scans 1,000 TCP ports on the host target. While
       many port scanners have traditionally lumped all ports into the open or
       closed states, Nmap is much more granular. It divides ports into six
       states: open, closed, filtered, unfiltered, open|filtered, or
       closed|filtered.

       These states are not intrinsic properties of the port itself, but
       describe how Nmap sees them. For example, an Nmap scan from the same
       network as the target may show port 135/tcp as open, while a scan at
       the same time with the same options from across the Internet might show
       that port as filtered.

       The six port states recognized by Nmap

	   An application is actively accepting TCP connections, UDP datagrams
	   or SCTP associations on this port. Finding these is often the
	   primary goal of port scanning. Security-minded people know that
	   each open port is an avenue for attack. Attackers and pen-testers
	   want to exploit the open ports, while administrators try to close
	   or protect them with firewalls without thwarting legitimate users.
	   Open ports are also interesting for non-security scans because they
	   show services available for use on the network.

	   A closed port is accessible (it receives and responds to Nmap probe
	   packets), but there is no application listening on it. They can be
	   helpful in showing that a host is up on an IP address (host
	   discovery, or ping scanning), and as part of OS detection. Because
	   closed ports are reachable, it may be worth scanning later in case
	   some open up. Administrators may want to consider blocking such
	   ports with a firewall. Then they would appear in the filtered
	   state, discussed next.

	   Nmap cannot determine whether the port is open because packet
	   filtering prevents its probes from reaching the port. The filtering
	   could be from a dedicated firewall device, router rules, or
	   host-based firewall software. These ports frustrate attackers
	   because they provide so little information. Sometimes they respond
	   with ICMP error messages such as type 3 code 13 (destination
	   unreachable: communication administratively prohibited), but
	   filters that simply drop probes without responding are far more
	   common. This forces Nmap to retry several times just in case the
	   probe was dropped due to network congestion rather than filtering.
	   This slows down the scan dramatically.

	   The unfiltered state means that a port is accessible, but Nmap is
	   unable to determine whether it is open or closed. Only the ACK
	   scan, which is used to map firewall rulesets, classifies ports into
	   this state. Scanning unfiltered ports with other scan types such as
	   Window scan, SYN scan, or FIN scan, may help resolve whether the
	   port is open.

	   Nmap places ports in this state when it is unable to determine
	   whether a port is open or filtered. This occurs for scan types in
	   which open ports give no response. The lack of response could also
	   mean that a packet filter dropped the probe or any response it
	   elicited. So Nmap does not know for sure whether the port is open
	   or being filtered. The UDP, IP protocol, FIN, NULL, and Xmas scans
	   classify ports this way.

	   This state is used when Nmap is unable to determine whether a port
	   is closed or filtered. It is only used for the IP ID idle scan.

PORT SCANNING TECHNIQUES
       As a novice performing automotive repair, I can struggle for hours
       trying to fit my rudimentary tools (hammer, duct tape, wrench, etc.) to
       the task at hand. When I fail miserably and tow my jalopy to a real
       mechanic, he invariably fishes around in a huge tool chest until
       pulling out the perfect gizmo which makes the job seem effortless. The
       art of port scanning is similar. Experts understand the dozens of scan
       techniques and choose the appropriate one (or combination) for a given
       task. Inexperienced users and script kiddies,.  on the other hand, try
       to solve every problem with the default SYN scan. Since Nmap is free,
       the only barrier to port scanning mastery is knowledge. That certainly
       beats the automotive world, where it may take great skill to determine
       that you need a strut spring compressor, then you still have to pay
       thousands of dollars for it.

       Most of the scan types are only available to privileged users..	This
       is because they send and receive raw packets,.  which requires root
       access on Unix systems. Using an administrator account on Windows is
       recommended, though Nmap sometimes works for unprivileged users on that
       platform when WinPcap has already been loaded into the OS. Requiring
       root privileges was a serious limitation when Nmap was released in
       1997, as many users only had access to shared shell accounts. Now, the
       world is different. Computers are cheaper, far more people have
       always-on direct Internet access, and desktop Unix systems (including
       Linux and Mac OS X) are prevalent. A Windows version of Nmap is now
       available, allowing it to run on even more desktops. For all these
       reasons, users have less need to run Nmap from limited shared shell
       accounts. This is fortunate, as the privileged options make Nmap far
       more powerful and flexible.

       While Nmap attempts to produce accurate results, keep in mind that all
       of its insights are based on packets returned by the target machines
       (or firewalls in front of them). Such hosts may be untrustworthy and
       send responses intended to confuse or mislead Nmap. Much more common
       are non-RFC-compliant hosts that do not respond as they should to Nmap
       probes. FIN, NULL, and Xmas scans are particularly susceptible to this
       problem. Such issues are specific to certain scan types and so are
       discussed in the individual scan type entries.

       This section documents the dozen or so port scan techniques supported
       by Nmap. Only one method may be used at a time, except that UDP scan
       (-sU) and any one of the SCTP scan types (-sY, -sZ) may be combined
       with any one of the TCP scan types. As a memory aid, port scan type
       options are of the form -sC, where C is a prominent character in the
       scan name, usually the first. The one exception to this is the
       deprecated FTP bounce scan (-b). By default, Nmap performs a SYN Scan,
       though it substitutes a connect scan if the user does not have proper
       privileges to send raw packets (requires root access on Unix). Of the
       scans listed in this section, unprivileged users can only execute
       connect and FTP bounce scans.

       -sS (TCP SYN scan) .
	   SYN scan is the default and most popular scan option for good
	   reasons. It can be performed quickly, scanning thousands of ports
	   per second on a fast network not hampered by restrictive firewalls.
	   It is also relatively unobtrusive and stealthy since it never
	   completes TCP connections. SYN scan works against any compliant TCP
	   stack rather than depending on idiosyncrasies of specific platforms
	   as Nmap's FIN/NULL/Xmas, Maimon and idle scans do. It also allows
	   clear, reliable differentiation between the open, closed, and
	   filtered states.

	   This technique is often referred to as half-open scanning, because
	   you don't open a full TCP connection. You send a SYN packet, as if
	   you are going to open a real connection and then wait for a
	   response. A SYN/ACK indicates the port is listening (open), while a
	   RST (reset) is indicative of a non-listener. If no response is
	   received after several retransmissions, the port is marked as
	   filtered. The port is also marked filtered if an ICMP unreachable
	   error (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received. The port is
	   also considered open if a SYN packet (without the ACK flag) is
	   received in response. This can be due to an extremely rare TCP
	   feature known as a simultaneous open or split handshake connection
	   (see http://nmap.org/misc/split-handshake.pdf).

       -sT (TCP connect scan) .
	   TCP connect scan is the default TCP scan type when SYN scan is not
	   an option. This is the case when a user does not have raw packet
	   privileges. Instead of writing raw packets as most other scan types
	   do, Nmap asks the underlying operating system to establish a
	   connection with the target machine and port by issuing the connect
	   system call. This is the same high-level system call that web
	   browsers, P2P clients, and most other network-enabled applications
	   use to establish a connection. It is part of a programming
	   interface known as the Berkeley Sockets API. Rather than read raw
	   packet responses off the wire, Nmap uses this API to obtain status
	   information on each connection attempt.

	   When SYN scan is available, it is usually a better choice. Nmap has
	   less control over the high level connect call than with raw
	   packets, making it less efficient. The system call completes
	   connections to open target ports rather than performing the
	   half-open reset that SYN scan does. Not only does this take longer
	   and require more packets to obtain the same information, but target
	   machines are more likely to log the connection. A decent IDS will
	   catch either, but most machines have no such alarm system. Many
	   services on your average Unix system will add a note to syslog, and
	   sometimes a cryptic error message, when Nmap connects and then
	   closes the connection without sending data. Truly pathetic services
	   crash when this happens, though that is uncommon. An administrator
	   who sees a bunch of connection attempts in her logs from a single
	   system should know that she has been connect scanned.

       -sU (UDP scans) .
	   While most popular services on the Internet run over the TCP
	   protocol, UDP[6] services are widely deployed. DNS, SNMP, and DHCP
	   (registered ports 53, 161/162, and 67/68) are three of the most
	   common. Because UDP scanning is generally slower and more difficult
	   than TCP, some security auditors ignore these ports. This is a
	   mistake, as exploitable UDP services are quite common and attackers
	   certainly don't ignore the whole protocol. Fortunately, Nmap can
	   help inventory UDP ports.

	   UDP scan is activated with the -sU option. It can be combined with
	   a TCP scan type such as SYN scan (-sS) to check both protocols
	   during the same run.

	   UDP scan works by sending a UDP packet to every targeted port. For
	   some common ports such as 53 and 161, a protocol-specific payload
	   is sent, but for most ports the packet is empty..  The
	   --data-length option can be used to send a fixed-length random
	   payload to every port or (if you specify a value of 0) to disable
	   payloads. If an ICMP port unreachable error (type 3, code 3) is
	   returned, the port is closed. Other ICMP unreachable errors (type
	   3, codes 1, 2, 9, 10, or 13) mark the port as filtered.
	   Occasionally, a service will respond with a UDP packet, proving
	   that it is open. If no response is received after retransmissions,
	   the port is classified as open|filtered. This means that the port
	   could be open, or perhaps packet filters are blocking the
	   communication. Version detection (-sV) can be used to help
	   differentiate the truly open ports from the filtered ones.

	   A big challenge with UDP scanning is doing it quickly. Open and
	   filtered ports rarely send any response, leaving Nmap to time out
	   and then conduct retransmissions just in case the probe or response
	   were lost. Closed ports are often an even bigger problem. They
	   usually send back an ICMP port unreachable error. But unlike the
	   RST packets sent by closed TCP ports in response to a SYN or
	   connect scan, many hosts rate limit.	 ICMP port unreachable
	   messages by default. Linux and Solaris are particularly strict
	   about this. For example, the Linux 2.4.20 kernel limits destination
	   unreachable messages to one per second (in net/ipv4/icmp.c).

	   Nmap detects rate limiting and slows down accordingly to avoid
	   flooding the network with useless packets that the target machine
	   will drop. Unfortunately, a Linux-style limit of one packet per
	   second makes a 65,536-port scan take more than 18 hours. Ideas for
	   speeding your UDP scans up include scanning more hosts in parallel,
	   doing a quick scan of just the popular ports first, scanning from
	   behind the firewall, and using --host-timeout to skip slow hosts.

       -sY (SCTP INIT scan) .

	   SCTP[7] is a relatively new alternative to the TCP and UDP
	   protocols, combining most characteristics of TCP and UDP, and also
	   adding new features like multi-homing and multi-streaming. It is
	   mostly being used for SS7/SIGTRAN related services but has the
	   potential to be used for other applications as well. SCTP INIT scan
	   is the SCTP equivalent of a TCP SYN scan. It can be performed
	   quickly, scanning thousands of ports per second on a fast network
	   not hampered by restrictive firewalls. Like SYN scan, INIT scan is
	   relatively unobtrusive and stealthy, since it never completes SCTP
	   associations. It also allows clear, reliable differentiation
	   between the open, closed, and filtered states.

	   This technique is often referred to as half-open scanning, because
	   you don't open a full SCTP association. You send an INIT chunk, as
	   if you are going to open a real association and then wait for a
	   response. An INIT-ACK chunk indicates the port is listening (open),
	   while an ABORT chunk is indicative of a non-listener. If no
	   response is received after several retransmissions, the port is
	   marked as filtered. The port is also marked filtered if an ICMP
	   unreachable error (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received.

       -sN; -sF; -sX (TCP NULL, FIN, and Xmas scans) .
	   These three scan types (even more are possible with the --scanflags
	   option described in the next section) exploit a subtle loophole in
	   the TCP RFC[8] to differentiate between open and closed ports. Page
	   65 of RFC 793 says that “if the [destination] port state is CLOSED
	   .... an incoming segment not containing a RST causes a RST to be
	   sent in response.”  Then the next page discusses packets sent to
	   open ports without the SYN, RST, or ACK bits set, stating that:
	   “you are unlikely to get here, but if you do, drop the segment, and
	   return.”

	   When scanning systems compliant with this RFC text, any packet not
	   containing SYN, RST, or ACK bits will result in a returned RST if
	   the port is closed and no response at all if the port is open. As
	   long as none of those three bits are included, any combination of
	   the other three (FIN, PSH, and URG) are OK. Nmap exploits this with
	   three scan types:

	   Null scan (-sN)
	       Does not set any bits (TCP flag header is 0)

	   FIN scan (-sF)
	       Sets just the TCP FIN bit.

	   Xmas scan (-sX)
	       Sets the FIN, PSH, and URG flags, lighting the packet up like a
	       Christmas tree.

	   These three scan types are exactly the same in behavior except for
	   the TCP flags set in probe packets. If a RST packet is received,
	   the port is considered closed, while no response means it is
	   open|filtered. The port is marked filtered if an ICMP unreachable
	   error (type 3, code 1, 2, 3, 9, 10, or 13) is received.

	   The key advantage to these scan types is that they can sneak
	   through certain non-stateful firewalls and packet filtering
	   routers. Another advantage is that these scan types are a little
	   more stealthy than even a SYN scan. Don't count on this though—most
	   modern IDS products can be configured to detect them. The big
	   downside is that not all systems follow RFC 793 to the letter. A
	   number of systems send RST responses to the probes regardless of
	   whether the port is open or not. This causes all of the ports to be
	   labeled closed. Major operating systems that do this are Microsoft
	   Windows, many Cisco devices, BSDI, and IBM OS/400. This scan does
	   work against most Unix-based systems though. Another downside of
	   these scans is that they can't distinguish open ports from certain
	   filtered ones, leaving you with the response open|filtered.

       -sA (TCP ACK scan) .
	   This scan is different than the others discussed so far in that it
	   never determines open (or even open|filtered) ports. It is used to
	   map out firewall rulesets, determining whether they are stateful or
	   not and which ports are filtered.

	   The ACK scan probe packet has only the ACK flag set (unless you use
	   --scanflags). When scanning unfiltered systems, open and closed
	   ports will both return a RST packet. Nmap then labels them as
	   unfiltered, meaning that they are reachable by the ACK packet, but
	   whether they are open or closed is undetermined. Ports that don't
	   respond, or send certain ICMP error messages back (type 3, code 1,
	   2, 3, 9, 10, or 13), are labeled filtered.

       -sW (TCP Window scan) .
	   Window scan is exactly the same as ACK scan except that it exploits
	   an implementation detail of certain systems to differentiate open
	   ports from closed ones, rather than always printing unfiltered when
	   a RST is returned. It does this by examining the TCP Window field
	   of the RST packets returned. On some systems, open ports use a
	   positive window size (even for RST packets) while closed ones have
	   a zero window. So instead of always listing a port as unfiltered
	   when it receives a RST back, Window scan lists the port as open or
	   closed if the TCP Window value in that reset is positive or zero,
	   respectively.

	   This scan relies on an implementation detail of a minority of
	   systems out on the Internet, so you can't always trust it. Systems
	   that don't support it will usually return all ports closed. Of
	   course, it is possible that the machine really has no open ports.
	   If most scanned ports are closed but a few common port numbers
	   (such as 22, 25, 53) are filtered, the system is most likely
	   susceptible. Occasionally, systems will even show the exact
	   opposite behavior. If your scan shows 1,000 open ports and three
	   closed or filtered ports, then those three may very well be the
	   truly open ones.

       -sM (TCP Maimon scan) .
	   The Maimon scan is named after its discoverer, Uriel Maimon..  He
	   described the technique in Phrack Magazine issue #49 (November
	   1996)..  Nmap, which included this technique, was released two
	   issues later. This technique is exactly the same as NULL, FIN, and
	   Xmas scans, except that the probe is FIN/ACK. According to RFC
	   793[8] (TCP), a RST packet should be generated in response to such
	   a probe whether the port is open or closed. However, Uriel noticed
	   that many BSD-derived systems simply drop the packet if the port is
	   open.

       --scanflags (Custom TCP scan) .
	   Truly advanced Nmap users need not limit themselves to the canned
	   scan types offered. The --scanflags option allows you to design
	   your own scan by specifying arbitrary TCP flags..  Let your
	   creative juices flow, while evading intrusion detection systems.
	   whose vendors simply paged through the Nmap man page adding
	   specific rules!

	   The --scanflags argument can be a numerical flag value such as 9
	   (PSH and FIN), but using symbolic names is easier. Just mash
	   together any combination of URG, ACK, PSH, RST, SYN, and FIN. For
	   example, --scanflags URGACKPSHRSTSYNFIN sets everything, though
	   it's not very useful for scanning. The order these are specified in
	   is irrelevant.

	   In addition to specifying the desired flags, you can specify a TCP
	   scan type (such as -sA or -sF). That base type tells Nmap how to
	   interpret responses. For example, a SYN scan considers no-response
	   to indicate a filtered port, while a FIN scan treats the same as
	   open|filtered. Nmap will behave the same way it does for the base
	   scan type, except that it will use the TCP flags you specify
	   instead. If you don't specify a base type, SYN scan is used.

       -sZ (SCTP COOKIE ECHO scan) .
	   SCTP COOKIE ECHO scan is a more advanced SCTP scan. It takes
	   advantage of the fact that SCTP implementations should silently
	   drop packets containing COOKIE ECHO chunks on open ports, but send
	   an ABORT if the port is closed. The advantage of this scan type is
	   that it is not as obvious a port scan than an INIT scan. Also,
	   there may be non-stateful firewall rulesets blocking INIT chunks,
	   but not COOKIE ECHO chunks. Don't be fooled into thinking that this
	   will make a port scan invisible; a good IDS will be able to detect
	   SCTP COOKIE ECHO scans too. The downside is that SCTP COOKIE ECHO
	   scans cannot differentiate between open and filtered ports, leaving
	   you with the state open|filtered in both cases.

       -sI zombie host[:probeport] (idle scan) .
	   This advanced scan method allows for a truly blind TCP port scan of
	   the target (meaning no packets are sent to the target from your
	   real IP address). Instead, a unique side-channel attack exploits
	   predictable IP fragmentation ID sequence generation on the zombie
	   host to glean information about the open ports on the target. IDS
	   systems will display the scan as coming from the zombie machine you
	   specify (which must be up and meet certain criteria).  This
	   fascinating scan type is too complex to fully describe in this
	   reference guide, so I wrote and posted an informal paper with full
	   details at http://nmap.org/book/idlescan.html.

	   Besides being extraordinarily stealthy (due to its blind nature),
	   this scan type permits mapping out IP-based trust relationships
	   between machines. The port listing shows open ports from the
	   perspective of the zombie host.  So you can try scanning a target
	   using various zombies that you think might be trusted.  (via
	   router/packet filter rules).

	   You can add a colon followed by a port number to the zombie host if
	   you wish to probe a particular port on the zombie for IP ID
	   changes. Otherwise Nmap will use the port it uses by default for
	   TCP pings (80).

       -sO (IP protocol scan) .
	   IP protocol scan allows you to determine which IP protocols (TCP,
	   ICMP, IGMP, etc.) are supported by target machines. This isn't
	   technically a port scan, since it cycles through IP protocol
	   numbers rather than TCP or UDP port numbers. Yet it still uses the
	   -p option to select scanned protocol numbers, reports its results
	   within the normal port table format, and even uses the same
	   underlying scan engine as the true port scanning methods. So it is
	   close enough to a port scan that it belongs here.

	   Besides being useful in its own right, protocol scan demonstrates
	   the power of open-source software. While the fundamental idea is
	   pretty simple, I had not thought to add it nor received any
	   requests for such functionality. Then in the summer of 2000,
	   Gerhard Rieger.  conceived the idea, wrote an excellent patch
	   implementing it, and sent it to the nmap-hackers mailing list..  I
	   incorporated that patch into the Nmap tree and released a new
	   version the next day. Few pieces of commercial software have users
	   enthusiastic enough to design and contribute their own
	   improvements!

	   Protocol scan works in a similar fashion to UDP scan. Instead of
	   iterating through the port number field of a UDP packet, it sends
	   IP packet headers and iterates through the eight-bit IP protocol
	   field. The headers are usually empty, containing no data and not
	   even the proper header for the claimed protocol. The exceptions are
	   TCP, UDP, ICMP, SCTP, and IGMP. A proper protocol header for those
	   is included since some systems won't send them otherwise and
	   because Nmap already has functions to create them. Instead of
	   watching for ICMP port unreachable messages, protocol scan is on
	   the lookout for ICMP protocol unreachable messages. If Nmap
	   receives any response in any protocol from the target host, Nmap
	   marks that protocol as open. An ICMP protocol unreachable error
	   (type 3, code 2) causes the protocol to be marked as closed Other
	   ICMP unreachable errors (type 3, code 1, 3, 9, 10, or 13) cause the
	   protocol to be marked filtered (though they prove that ICMP is open
	   at the same time). If no response is received after
	   retransmissions, the protocol is marked open|filtered

       -b FTP relay host (FTP bounce scan) .
	   An interesting feature of the FTP protocol (RFC 959[9]) is support
	   for so-called proxy FTP connections. This allows a user to connect
	   to one FTP server, then ask that files be sent to a third-party
	   server. Such a feature is ripe for abuse on many levels, so most
	   servers have ceased supporting it. One of the abuses this feature
	   allows is causing the FTP server to port scan other hosts. Simply
	   ask the FTP server to send a file to each interesting port of a
	   target host in turn. The error message will describe whether the
	   port is open or not. This is a good way to bypass firewalls because
	   organizational FTP servers are often placed where they have more
	   access to other internal hosts than any old Internet host would.
	   Nmap supports FTP bounce scan with the -b option. It takes an
	   argument of the form username:password@server:port.	Server is the
	   name or IP address of a vulnerable FTP server. As with a normal
	   URL, you may omit username:password, in which case anonymous login
	   credentials (user: anonymous password:-wwwuser@) are used. The port
	   number (and preceding colon) may be omitted as well, in which case
	   the default FTP port (21) on server is used.

	   This vulnerability was widespread in 1997 when Nmap was released,
	   but has largely been fixed. Vulnerable servers are still around, so
	   it is worth trying when all else fails. If bypassing a firewall is
	   your goal, scan the target network for port 21 (or even for any FTP
	   services if you scan all ports with version detection) and use the
	   ftp-bounce.	NSE script. Nmap will tell you whether the host is
	   vulnerable or not. If you are just trying to cover your tracks, you
	   don't need to (and, in fact, shouldn't) limit yourself to hosts on
	   the target network. Before you go scanning random Internet
	   addresses for vulnerable FTP servers, consider that sysadmins may
	   not appreciate you abusing their servers in this way.

PORT SPECIFICATION AND SCAN ORDER
       In addition to all of the scan methods discussed previously, Nmap
       offers options for specifying which ports are scanned and whether the
       scan order is randomized or sequential. By default, Nmap scans the most
       common 1,000 ports for each protocol.

       -p port ranges (Only scan specified ports) .
	   This option specifies which ports you want to scan and overrides
	   the default. Individual port numbers are OK, as are ranges
	   separated by a hyphen (e.g.	1-1023). The beginning and/or end
	   values of a range may be omitted, causing Nmap to use 1 and 65535,
	   respectively. So you can specify -p- to scan ports from 1 through
	   65535. Scanning port zero.  is allowed if you specify it
	   explicitly. For IP protocol scanning (-sO), this option specifies
	   the protocol numbers you wish to scan for (0–255).

	   When scanning a combination of protocols (e.g. TCP and UDP), you
	   can specify a particular protocol by preceding the port numbers by
	   T: for TCP, U: for UDP, S: for SCTP, or P: for IP Protocol. The
	   qualifier lasts until you specify another qualifier. For example,
	   the argument -p U:53,111,137,T:21-25,80,139,8080 would scan UDP
	   ports 53, 111,and 137, as well as the listed TCP ports. Note that
	   to scan both UDP and TCP, you have to specify -sU and at least one
	   TCP scan type (such as -sS, -sF, or -sT). If no protocol qualifier
	   is given, the port numbers are added to all protocol lists.	Ports
	   can also be specified by name according to what the port is
	   referred to in the nmap-services. You can even use the wildcards *
	   and ?  with the names. For example, to scan FTP and all ports whose
	   names begin with “http”, use -p ftp,http*. Be careful about shell
	   expansions and quote the argument to -p if unsure.

	   Ranges of ports can be surrounded by square brackets to indicate
	   ports inside that range that appear in nmap-services. For example,
	   the following will scan all ports in nmap-services equal to or
	   below 1024: -p [-1024]. Be careful with shell expansions and quote
	   the argument to -p if unsure.

       -F (Fast (limited port) scan) .
	   Specifies that you wish to scan fewer ports than the default.
	   Normally Nmap scans the most common 1,000 ports for each scanned
	   protocol. With -F, this is reduced to 100.

	   Nmap needs an nmap-services file with frequency information in
	   order to know which ports are the most common. If port frequency
	   information isn't available, perhaps because of the use of a custom
	   nmap-services file, Nmap scans all named ports plus ports 1-1024.
	   In that case, -F means to scan only ports that are named in the
	   services file.

       -r (Don't randomize ports) .
	   By default, Nmap randomizes the scanned port order (except that
	   certain commonly accessible ports are moved near the beginning for
	   efficiency reasons). This randomization is normally desirable, but
	   you can specify -r for sequential (sorted from lowest to highest)
	   port scanning instead.

       --port-ratio ratio<decimal number between 0 and 1>
	   Scans all ports in nmap-services file with a ratio greater than the
	   one given.  ratio must be between 0.0 and 1.1.

       --top-ports n
	   Scans the n highest-ratio ports found in nmap-services file.	 n
	   must be 1 or greater.

SERVICE AND VERSION DETECTION
       Point Nmap at a remote machine and it might tell you that ports 25/tcp,
       80/tcp, and 53/udp are open. Using its nmap-services.  database of
       about 2,200 well-known services,.  Nmap would report that those ports
       probably correspond to a mail server (SMTP), web server (HTTP), and
       name server (DNS) respectively. This lookup is usually accurate—the
       vast majority of daemons listening on TCP port 25 are, in fact, mail
       servers. However, you should not bet your security on this! People can
       and do run services on strange ports..

       Even if Nmap is right, and the hypothetical server above is running
       SMTP, HTTP, and DNS servers, that is not a lot of information. When
       doing vulnerability assessments (or even simple network inventories) of
       your companies or clients, you really want to know which mail and DNS
       servers and versions are running. Having an accurate version number
       helps dramatically in determining which exploits a server is vulnerable
       to. Version detection helps you obtain this information.

       After TCP and/or UDP ports are discovered using one of the other scan
       methods, version detection interrogates those ports to determine more
       about what is actually running. The nmap-service-probes.	 database
       contains probes for querying various services and match expressions to
       recognize and parse responses. Nmap tries to determine the service
       protocol (e.g. FTP, SSH, Telnet, HTTP), the application name (e.g. ISC
       BIND, Apache httpd, Solaris telnetd), the version number, hostname,
       device type (e.g. printer, router), the OS family (e.g. Windows,
       Linux). When possible, Nmap also gets the Common Platform Enumeration
       (CPE).  representation of this information. Sometimes miscellaneous
       details like whether an X server is open to connections, the SSH
       protocol version, or the KaZaA user name, are available. Of course,
       most services don't provide all of this information. If Nmap was
       compiled with OpenSSL support, it will connect to SSL servers to deduce
       the service listening behind that encryption layer..  Some UDP ports
       are left in the open|filtered state after a UDP port scan is unable to
       determine whether the port is open or filtered. Version detection will
       try to elicit a response from these ports (just as it does with open
       ports), and change the state to open if it succeeds.  open|filtered TCP
       ports are treated the same way. Note that the Nmap -A option enables
       version detection among other things.  A paper documenting the
       workings, usage, and customization of version detection is available at
       http://nmap.org/book/vscan.html.

       When RPC services are discovered, the Nmap RPC grinder.	is
       automatically used to determine the RPC program and version numbers. It
       takes all the TCP/UDP ports detected as RPC and floods them with SunRPC
       program NULL commands in an attempt to determine whether they are RPC
       ports, and if so, what program and version number they serve up. Thus
       you can effectively obtain the same info as rpcinfo -p even if the
       target's portmapper is behind a firewall (or protected by TCP
       wrappers). Decoys do not currently work with RPC scan..

       When Nmap receives responses from a service but cannot match them to
       its database, it prints out a special fingerprint and a URL for you to
       submit if to if you know for sure what is running on the port. Please
       take a couple minutes to make the submission so that your find can
       benefit everyone. Thanks to these submissions, Nmap has about 6,500
       pattern matches for more than 650 protocols such as SMTP, FTP, HTTP,
       etc..

       Version detection is enabled and controlled with the following options:

       -sV (Version detection) .
	   Enables version detection, as discussed above. Alternatively, you
	   can use -A, which enables version detection among other things.

	   -sR.	 is an alias for -sV. Prior to March 2011, it was used to
	   active the RPC grinder separately from version detection, but now
	   these options are always combined.

       --allports (Don't exclude any ports from version detection) .
	   By default, Nmap version detection skips TCP port 9100 because some
	   printers simply print anything sent to that port, leading to dozens
	   of pages of HTTP GET requests, binary SSL session requests, etc.
	   This behavior can be changed by modifying or removing the Exclude
	   directive in nmap-service-probes, or you can specify --allports to
	   scan all ports regardless of any Exclude directive.

       --version-intensity intensity (Set version scan intensity) .
	   When performing a version scan (-sV), Nmap sends a series of
	   probes, each of which is assigned a rarity value between one and
	   nine. The lower-numbered probes are effective against a wide
	   variety of common services, while the higher-numbered ones are
	   rarely useful. The intensity level specifies which probes should be
	   applied. The higher the number, the more likely it is the service
	   will be correctly identified. However, high intensity scans take
	   longer. The intensity must be between 0 and 9..  The default is 7..
	   When a probe is registered to the target port via the
	   nmap-service-probes ports directive, that probe is tried regardless
	   of intensity level. This ensures that the DNS probes will always be
	   attempted against any open port 53, the SSL probe will be done
	   against 443, etc.

       --version-light (Enable light mode) .
	   This is a convenience alias for --version-intensity 2. This light
	   mode makes version scanning much faster, but it is slightly less
	   likely to identify services.

       --version-all (Try every single probe) .
	   An alias for --version-intensity 9, ensuring that every single
	   probe is attempted against each port.

       --version-trace (Trace version scan activity) .
	   This causes Nmap to print out extensive debugging info about what
	   version scanning is doing. It is a subset of what you get with
	   --packet-trace.

OS DETECTION
       One of Nmap's best-known features is remote OS detection using TCP/IP
       stack fingerprinting. Nmap sends a series of TCP and UDP packets to the
       remote host and examines practically every bit in the responses. After
       performing dozens of tests such as TCP ISN sampling, TCP options
       support and ordering, IP ID sampling, and the initial window size
       check, Nmap compares the results to its nmap-os-db.  database of more
       than 2,600 known OS fingerprints and prints out the OS details if there
       is a match. Each fingerprint includes a freeform textual description of
       the OS, and a classification which provides the vendor name (e.g. Sun),
       underlying OS (e.g. Solaris), OS generation (e.g. 10), and device type
       (general purpose, router, switch, game console, etc). Most fingerprints
       also have a Common Platform Enumeration (CPE).  representation, like
       cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel:2.6.

       If Nmap is unable to guess the OS of a machine, and conditions are good
       (e.g. at least one open port and one closed port were found), Nmap will
       provide a URL you can use to submit the fingerprint if you know (for
       sure) the OS running on the machine. By doing this you contribute to
       the pool of operating systems known to Nmap and thus it will be more
       accurate for everyone.

       OS detection enables some other tests which make use of information
       that is gathered during the process anyway. One of these is TCP
       Sequence Predictability Classification. This measures approximately how
       hard it is to establish a forged TCP connection against the remote
       host. It is useful for exploiting source-IP based trust relationships
       (rlogin, firewall filters, etc) or for hiding the source of an attack.
       This sort of spoofing is rarely performed any more, but many machines
       are still vulnerable to it. The actual difficulty number is based on
       statistical sampling and may fluctuate. It is generally better to use
       the English classification such as “worthy challenge” or “trivial
       joke”. This is only reported in normal output in verbose (-v) mode.
       When verbose mode is enabled along with -O, IP ID sequence generation
       is also reported. Most machines are in the “incremental” class, which
       means that they increment the ID field in the IP header for each packet
       they send. This makes them vulnerable to several advanced information
       gathering and spoofing attacks.

       Another bit of extra information enabled by OS detection is a guess at
       a target's uptime. This uses the TCP timestamp option (RFC 1323[10]) to
       guess when a machine was last rebooted. The guess can be inaccurate due
       to the timestamp counter not being initialized to zero or the counter
       overflowing and wrapping around, so it is printed only in verbose mode.

       A paper documenting the workings, usage, and customization of OS
       detection is available at http://nmap.org/book/osdetect.html.

       OS detection is enabled and controlled with the following options:

       -O (Enable OS detection) .
	   Enables OS detection, as discussed above. Alternatively, you can
	   use -A to enable OS detection along with other things.

       --osscan-limit (Limit OS detection to promising targets) .
	   OS detection is far more effective if at least one open and one
	   closed TCP port are found. Set this option and Nmap will not even
	   try OS detection against hosts that do not meet this criteria. This
	   can save substantial time, particularly on -Pn scans against many
	   hosts. It only matters when OS detection is requested with -O or
	   -A.

       --osscan-guess; --fuzzy (Guess OS detection results) .
	   When Nmap is unable to detect a perfect OS match, it sometimes
	   offers up near-matches as possibilities. The match has to be very
	   close for Nmap to do this by default. Either of these (equivalent)
	   options make Nmap guess more aggressively. Nmap will still tell you
	   when an imperfect match is printed and display its confidence level
	   (percentage) for each guess.

       --max-os-tries (Set the maximum number of OS detection tries against a
       target) .
	   When Nmap performs OS detection against a target and fails to find
	   a perfect match, it usually repeats the attempt. By default, Nmap
	   tries five times if conditions are favorable for OS fingerprint
	   submission, and twice when conditions aren't so good. Specifying a
	   lower --max-os-tries value (such as 1) speeds Nmap up, though you
	   miss out on retries which could potentially identify the OS.
	   Alternatively, a high value may be set to allow even more retries
	   when conditions are favorable. This is rarely done, except to
	   generate better fingerprints for submission and integration into
	   the Nmap OS database.

NMAP SCRIPTING ENGINE (NSE)
       The Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) is one of Nmap's most powerful and
       flexible features. It allows users to write (and share) simple scripts
       (using the Lua programming language[11],

       Tasks we had in mind when creating the system include network
       discovery, more sophisticated version detection, vulnerability
       detection. NSE can even be used for vulnerability exploitation.

       To reflect those different uses and to simplify the choice of which
       scripts to run, each script contains a field associating it with one or
       more categories. Currently defined categories are auth, broadcast,
       default.	 discovery, dos, exploit, external, fuzzer, intrusive,
       malware, safe, version, and vuln. These are all described at
       http://nmap.org/book/nse-usage.html#nse-categories.

       Scripts are not run in a sandbox and thus could accidentally or
       maliciously damage your system or invade your privacy. Never run
       scripts from third parties unless you trust the authors or have
       carefully audited the scripts yourself.

       The Nmap Scripting Engine is described in detail at
       http://nmap.org/book/nse.html

       and is controlled by the following options:

       -sC .
	   Performs a script scan using the default set of scripts. It is
	   equivalent to --script=default. Some of the scripts in this
	   category are considered intrusive and should not be run against a
	   target network without permission.

       --script filename|category|directory|expression[,...] .
	   Runs a script scan using the comma-separated list of filenames,
	   script categories, and directories. Each element in the list may
	   also be a Boolean expression describing a more complex set of
	   scripts. Each element is interpreted first as an expression, then
	   as a category, and finally as a file or directory name.

	   There are two special features for advanced users only. One is to
	   prefix script names and expressions with + to force them to run
	   even if they normally wouldn't (e.g. the relevant service wasn't
	   detected on the target port). The other is that the argument all
	   may be used to specify every script in Nmap's database. Be cautious
	   with this because NSE contains dangerous scripts such as exploits,
	   brute force authentication crackers, and denial of service attacks.

	   File and directory names may be relative or absolute. Absolute
	   names are used directly. Relative paths are looked for in the
	   scripts of each of the following places until found:
	       --datadir
	       $NMAPDIR.
	       ~/.nmap (not searched on Windows).
	       HOME\AppData\Roaming\nmap (only on Windows).
	       the directory containing the nmap executable
	       the directory containing the nmap executable, followed by
	       ../share/nmap
	       NMAPDATADIR.
	       the current directory.

	   When a directory name is given, Nmap loads every file in the
	   directory whose name ends with .nse. All other files are ignored
	   and directories are not searched recursively. When a filename is
	   given, it does not have to have the .nse extension; it will be
	   added automatically if necessary.  Nmap scripts are stored in a
	   scripts subdirectory of the Nmap data directory by default (see
	   http://nmap.org/book/data-files.html).

	   For efficiency, scripts are indexed in a database stored in
	   scripts/script.db,.	which lists the category or categories in
	   which each script belongs.  When referring to scripts from
	   script.db by name, you can use a shell-style ‘*’ wildcard.

	   nmap --script "http-*"
	       Loads all scripts whose name starts with http-, such as
	       http-auth and http-open-proxy. The argument to --script had to
	       be in quotes to protect the wildcard from the shell.

	   More complicated script selection can be done using the and, or,
	   and not operators to build Boolean expressions. The operators have
	   the same precedence[12] as in Lua: not is the highest, followed by
	   and and then or. You can alter precedence by using parentheses.
	   Because expressions contain space characters it is necessary to
	   quote them.

	   nmap --script "not intrusive"
	       Loads every script except for those in the intrusive category.

	   nmap --script "default or safe"
	       This is functionally equivalent to nmap --script
	       "default,safe". It loads all scripts that are in the default
	       category or the safe category or both.

	   nmap --script "default and safe"
	       Loads those scripts that are in both the default and safe
	       categories.

	   nmap --script "(default or safe or intrusive) and not http-*"
	       Loads scripts in the default, safe, or intrusive categories,
	       except for those whose names start with http-.

       --script-args n1=v1,n2={n3=v3},n4={v4,v5} .
	   Lets you provide arguments to NSE scripts. Arguments are a
	   comma-separated list of name=value pairs. Names and values may be
	   strings not containing whitespace or the characters ‘{’, ‘}’, ‘=’,
	   or ‘,’. To include one of these characters in a string, enclose the
	   string in single or double quotes. Within a quoted string, ‘\’
	   escapes a quote. A backslash is only used to escape quotation marks
	   in this special case; in all other cases a backslash is interpreted
	   literally. Values may also be tables enclosed in {}, just as in
	   Lua. A table may contain simple string values or more name-value
	   pairs, including nested tables. Many scripts qualify their
	   arguments with the script name, as in xmpp-info.server_name. You
	   may use that full qualified version to affect just the specified
	   script, or you may pass the unqualified version (server_name in
	   this case) to affect all scripts using that argument name. A script
	   will first check for its fully qualified argument name (the name
	   specified in its documentation) before it accepts an unqualified
	   argument name. A complex example of script arguments is
	   --script-args
	   'user=foo,pass=",{}=bar",whois={whodb=nofollow+ripe},xmpp-info.server_name=localhost'.
	   The online NSE Documentation Portal at http://nmap.org/nsedoc/
	   lists the arguments that each script accepts.

       --script-args-file filename .
	   Lets you load arguments to NSE scripts from a file. Any arguments
	   on the command line supersede ones in the file. The file can be an
	   absolute path, or a path relative to Nmap's usual search path
	   (NMAPDIR, etc.) Arguments can be comma-separated or
	   newline-separated, but otherwise follow the same rules as for
	   --script-args, without requiring special quoting and escaping,
	   since they are not parsed by the shell.

       --script-help filename|category|directory|expression|all[,...] .
	   Shows help about scripts. For each script matching the given
	   specification, Nmap prints the script name, its categories, and its
	   description. The specifications are the same as those accepted by
	   --script; so for example if you want help about the ftp-anon
	   script, you would run nmap --script-help ftp-anon. In addition to
	   getting help for individual scripts, you can use this as a preview
	   of what scripts will be run for a specification, for example with
	   nmap --script-help default.

       --script-trace .
	   This option does what --packet-trace does, just one ISO layer
	   higher. If this option is specified all incoming and outgoing
	   communication performed by a script is printed. The displayed
	   information includes the communication protocol, the source, the
	   target and the transmitted data. If more than 5% of all transmitted
	   data is not printable, then the trace output is in a hex dump
	   format. Specifying --packet-trace enables script tracing too.

       --script-updatedb .
	   This option updates the script database found in scripts/script.db
	   which is used by Nmap to determine the available default scripts
	   and categories. It is only necessary to update the database if you
	   have added or removed NSE scripts from the default scripts
	   directory or if you have changed the categories of any script. This
	   option is generally used by itself: nmap --script-updatedb.

TIMING AND PERFORMANCE
       One of my highest Nmap development priorities has always been
       performance. A default scan (nmap hostname) of a host on my local
       network takes a fifth of a second. That is barely enough time to blink,
       but adds up when you are scanning hundreds or thousands of hosts.
       Moreover, certain scan options such as UDP scanning and version
       detection can increase scan times substantially. So can certain
       firewall configurations, particularly response rate limiting. While
       Nmap utilizes parallelism and many advanced algorithms to accelerate
       these scans, the user has ultimate control over how Nmap runs. Expert
       users carefully craft Nmap commands to obtain only the information they
       care about while meeting their time constraints.

       Techniques for improving scan times include omitting non-critical
       tests, and upgrading to the latest version of Nmap (performance
       enhancements are made frequently). Optimizing timing parameters can
       also make a substantial difference. Those options are listed below.

       Some options accept a time parameter. This is specified in seconds by
       default, though you can append ‘ms’, ‘s’, ‘m’, or ‘h’ to the value to
       specify milliseconds, seconds, minutes, or hours. So the --host-timeout
       arguments 900000ms, 900, 900s, and 15m all do the same thing.

       --min-hostgroup numhosts; --max-hostgroup numhosts (Adjust parallel
       scan group sizes) .
	   Nmap has the ability to port scan or version scan multiple hosts in
	   parallel. Nmap does this by dividing the target IP space into
	   groups and then scanning one group at a time. In general, larger
	   groups are more efficient. The downside is that host results can't
	   be provided until the whole group is finished. So if Nmap started
	   out with a group size of 50, the user would not receive any reports
	   (except for the updates offered in verbose mode) until the first 50
	   hosts are completed.

	   By default, Nmap takes a compromise approach to this conflict. It
	   starts out with a group size as low as five so the first results
	   come quickly and then increases the groupsize to as high as 1024.
	   The exact default numbers depend on the options given. For
	   efficiency reasons, Nmap uses larger group sizes for UDP or
	   few-port TCP scans.

	   When a maximum group size is specified with --max-hostgroup, Nmap
	   will never exceed that size. Specify a minimum size with
	   --min-hostgroup and Nmap will try to keep group sizes above that
	   level. Nmap may have to use smaller groups than you specify if
	   there are not enough target hosts left on a given interface to
	   fulfill the specified minimum. Both may be set to keep the group
	   size within a specific range, though this is rarely desired.

	   These options do not have an effect during the host discovery phase
	   of a scan. This includes plain ping scans (-sn). Host discovery
	   always works in large groups of hosts to improve speed and
	   accuracy.

	   The primary use of these options is to specify a large minimum
	   group size so that the full scan runs more quickly. A common choice
	   is 256 to scan a network in Class C sized chunks. For a scan with
	   many ports, exceeding that number is unlikely to help much. For
	   scans of just a few port numbers, host group sizes of 2048 or more
	   may be helpful.

       --min-parallelism numprobes; --max-parallelism numprobes (Adjust probe
       parallelization) .
	   These options control the total number of probes that may be
	   outstanding for a host group. They are used for port scanning and
	   host discovery. By default, Nmap calculates an ever-changing ideal
	   parallelism based on network performance. If packets are being
	   dropped, Nmap slows down and allows fewer outstanding probes. The
	   ideal probe number slowly rises as the network proves itself
	   worthy. These options place minimum or maximum bounds on that
	   variable. By default, the ideal parallelism can drop to one if the
	   network proves unreliable and rise to several hundred in perfect
	   conditions.

	   The most common usage is to set --min-parallelism to a number
	   higher than one to speed up scans of poorly performing hosts or
	   networks. This is a risky option to play with, as setting it too
	   high may affect accuracy. Setting this also reduces Nmap's ability
	   to control parallelism dynamically based on network conditions. A
	   value of 10 might be reasonable, though I only adjust this value as
	   a last resort.

	   The --max-parallelism option is sometimes set to one to prevent
	   Nmap from sending more than one probe at a time to hosts. The
	   --scan-delay option, discussed later, is another way to do this.

       --min-rtt-timeout time, --max-rtt-timeout time, --initial-rtt-timeout
       time (Adjust probe timeouts) .
	   Nmap maintains a running timeout value for determining how long it
	   will wait for a probe response before giving up or retransmitting
	   the probe. This is calculated based on the response times of
	   previous probes.

	   If the network latency shows itself to be significant and variable,
	   this timeout can grow to several seconds. It also starts at a
	   conservative (high) level and may stay that way for a while when
	   Nmap scans unresponsive hosts.

	   Specifying a lower --max-rtt-timeout and --initial-rtt-timeout than
	   the defaults can cut scan times significantly. This is particularly
	   true for pingless (-Pn) scans, and those against heavily filtered
	   networks. Don't get too aggressive though. The scan can end up
	   taking longer if you specify such a low value that many probes are
	   timing out and retransmitting while the response is in transit.

	   If all the hosts are on a local network, 100 milliseconds
	   (--max-rtt-timeout 100ms) is a reasonable aggressive value. If
	   routing is involved, ping a host on the network first with the ICMP
	   ping utility, or with a custom packet crafter such as Nping.	 that
	   is more likely to get through a firewall. Look at the maximum round
	   trip time out of ten packets or so. You might want to double that
	   for the --initial-rtt-timeout and triple or quadruple it for the
	   --max-rtt-timeout. I generally do not set the maximum RTT below
	   100 ms, no matter what the ping times are. Nor do I exceed 1000 ms.

	   --min-rtt-timeout is a rarely used option that could be useful when
	   a network is so unreliable that even Nmap's default is too
	   aggressive. Since Nmap only reduces the timeout down to the minimum
	   when the network seems to be reliable, this need is unusual and
	   should be reported as a bug to the nmap-dev mailing list..

       --max-retries numtries (Specify the maximum number of port scan probe
       retransmissions) .
	   When Nmap receives no response to a port scan probe, it could mean
	   the port is filtered. Or maybe the probe or response was simply
	   lost on the network. It is also possible that the target host has
	   rate limiting enabled that temporarily blocked the response. So
	   Nmap tries again by retransmitting the initial probe. If Nmap
	   detects poor network reliability, it may try many more times before
	   giving up on a port. While this benefits accuracy, it also lengthen
	   scan times. When performance is critical, scans may be sped up by
	   limiting the number of retransmissions allowed. You can even
	   specify --max-retries 0 to prevent any retransmissions, though that
	   is only recommended for situations such as informal surveys where
	   occasional missed ports and hosts are acceptable.

	   The default (with no -T template) is to allow ten retransmissions.
	   If a network seems reliable and the target hosts aren't rate
	   limiting, Nmap usually only does one retransmission. So most target
	   scans aren't even affected by dropping --max-retries to a low value
	   such as three. Such values can substantially speed scans of slow
	   (rate limited) hosts. You usually lose some information when Nmap
	   gives up on ports early, though that may be preferable to letting
	   the --host-timeout expire and losing all information about the
	   target.

       --host-timeout time (Give up on slow target hosts) .
	   Some hosts simply take a long time to scan. This may be due to
	   poorly performing or unreliable networking hardware or software,
	   packet rate limiting, or a restrictive firewall. The slowest few
	   percent of the scanned hosts can eat up a majority of the scan
	   time. Sometimes it is best to cut your losses and skip those hosts
	   initially. Specify --host-timeout with the maximum amount of time
	   you are willing to wait. For example, specify 30m to ensure that
	   Nmap doesn't waste more than half an hour on a single host. Note
	   that Nmap may be scanning other hosts at the same time during that
	   half an hour, so it isn't a complete loss. A host that times out is
	   skipped. No port table, OS detection, or version detection results
	   are printed for that host.

       --scan-delay time; --max-scan-delay time (Adjust delay between probes)
       .
	   This option causes Nmap to wait at least the given amount of time
	   between each probe it sends to a given host. This is particularly
	   useful in the case of rate limiting..  Solaris machines (among many
	   others) will usually respond to UDP scan probe packets with only
	   one ICMP message per second. Any more than that sent by Nmap will
	   be wasteful. A --scan-delay of 1s will keep Nmap at that slow rate.
	   Nmap tries to detect rate limiting and adjust the scan delay
	   accordingly, but it doesn't hurt to specify it explicitly if you
	   already know what rate works best.

	   When Nmap adjusts the scan delay upward to cope with rate limiting,
	   the scan slows down dramatically. The --max-scan-delay option
	   specifies the largest delay that Nmap will allow. A low
	   --max-scan-delay can speed up Nmap, but it is risky. Setting this
	   value too low can lead to wasteful packet retransmissions and
	   possible missed ports when the target implements strict rate
	   limiting.

	   Another use of --scan-delay is to evade threshold based intrusion
	   detection and prevention systems (IDS/IPS)..

       --min-rate number; --max-rate number (Directly control the scanning
       rate) .
	   Nmap's dynamic timing does a good job of finding an appropriate
	   speed at which to scan. Sometimes, however, you may happen to know
	   an appropriate scanning rate for a network, or you may have to
	   guarantee that a scan will be finished by a certain time. Or
	   perhaps you must keep Nmap from scanning too quickly. The
	   --min-rate and --max-rate options are designed for these
	   situations.

	   When the --min-rate option is given Nmap will do its best to send
	   packets as fast as or faster than the given rate. The argument is a
	   positive real number representing a packet rate in packets per
	   second. For example, specifying --min-rate 300 means that Nmap will
	   try to keep the sending rate at or above 300 packets per second.
	   Specifying a minimum rate does not keep Nmap from going faster if
	   conditions warrant.

	   Likewise, --max-rate limits a scan's sending rate to a given
	   maximum. Use --max-rate 100, for example, to limit sending to 100
	   packets per second on a fast network. Use --max-rate 0.1 for a slow
	   scan of one packet every ten seconds. Use --min-rate and --max-rate
	   together to keep the rate inside a certain range.

	   These two options are global, affecting an entire scan, not
	   individual hosts. They only affect port scans and host discovery
	   scans. Other features like OS detection implement their own timing.

	   There are two conditions when the actual scanning rate may fall
	   below the requested minimum. The first is if the minimum is faster
	   than the fastest rate at which Nmap can send, which is dependent on
	   hardware. In this case Nmap will simply send packets as fast as
	   possible, but be aware that such high rates are likely to cause a
	   loss of accuracy. The second case is when Nmap has nothing to send,
	   for example at the end of a scan when the last probes have been
	   sent and Nmap is waiting for them to time out or be responded to.
	   It's normal to see the scanning rate drop at the end of a scan or
	   in between hostgroups. The sending rate may temporarily exceed the
	   maximum to make up for unpredictable delays, but on average the
	   rate will stay at or below the maximum.

	   Specifying a minimum rate should be done with care. Scanning faster
	   than a network can support may lead to a loss of accuracy. In some
	   cases, using a faster rate can make a scan take longer than it
	   would with a slower rate. This is because Nmap's

	   adaptive retransmission algorithms will detect the network
	   congestion caused by an excessive scanning rate and increase the
	   number of retransmissions in order to improve accuracy. So even
	   though packets are sent at a higher rate, more packets are sent
	   overall. Cap the number of retransmissions with the --max-retries
	   option if you need to set an upper limit on total scan time.

       --defeat-rst-ratelimit .
	   Many hosts have long used rate limiting.  to reduce the number of
	   ICMP error messages (such as port-unreachable errors) they send.
	   Some systems now apply similar rate limits to the RST (reset)
	   packets they generate. This can slow Nmap down dramatically as it
	   adjusts its timing to reflect those rate limits. You can tell Nmap
	   to ignore those rate limits (for port scans such as SYN scan which
	   don't treat non-responsive ports as open) by specifying
	   --defeat-rst-ratelimit.

	   Using this option can reduce accuracy, as some ports will appear
	   non-responsive because Nmap didn't wait long enough for a
	   rate-limited RST response. With a SYN scan, the non-response
	   results in the port being labeled filtered rather than the closed
	   state we see when RST packets are received. This option is useful
	   when you only care about open ports, and distinguishing between
	   closed and filtered ports isn't worth the extra time.

       --nsock-engine epoll|kqueue|poll|select .
	   Enforce use of a given nsock IO multiplexing engine. Only the
	   select(2)-based fallback engine is guaranteed to be available on
	   your system. Engines are named after the name of the IO management
	   facility they leverage. Engines currenty implemented are epoll,
	   kqueue, poll, and select, but not all will be present on any
	   platform. Use nmap -V to see which engines are supported.

       -T paranoid|sneaky|polite|normal|aggressive|insane (Set a timing
       template) .
	   While the fine-grained timing controls discussed in the previous
	   section are powerful and effective, some people find them
	   confusing. Moreover, choosing the appropriate values can sometimes
	   take more time than the scan you are trying to optimize. So Nmap
	   offers a simpler approach, with six timing templates. You can
	   specify them with the -T option and their number (0–5) or their
	   name. The template names are paranoid (0), sneaky (1), polite (2),
	   normal (3), aggressive (4), and insane (5). The first two are for
	   IDS evasion. Polite mode slows down the scan to use less bandwidth
	   and target machine resources. Normal mode is the default and so -T3
	   does nothing. Aggressive mode speeds scans up by making the
	   assumption that you are on a reasonably fast and reliable network.
	   Finally insane mode.	 assumes that you are on an extraordinarily
	   fast network or are willing to sacrifice some accuracy for speed.

	   These templates allow the user to specify how aggressive they wish
	   to be, while leaving Nmap to pick the exact timing values. The
	   templates also make some minor speed adjustments for which
	   fine-grained control options do not currently exist. For example,
	   -T4.	 prohibits the dynamic scan delay from exceeding 10 ms for TCP
	   ports and -T5 caps that value at 5 ms. Templates can be used in
	   combination with fine-grained controls, and the fine-grained
	   controls will you specify will take precedence over the timing
	   template default for that parameter. I recommend using -T4 when
	   scanning reasonably modern and reliable networks. Keep that option
	   even when you add fine-grained controls so that you benefit from
	   those extra minor optimizations that it enables.

	   If you are on a decent broadband or ethernet connection, I would
	   recommend always using -T4. Some people love -T5 though it is too
	   aggressive for my taste. People sometimes specify -T2 because they
	   think it is less likely to crash hosts or because they consider
	   themselves to be polite in general. They often don't realize just
	   how slow -T polite.	really is. Their scan may take ten times
	   longer than a default scan. Machine crashes and bandwidth problems
	   are rare with the default timing options (-T3) and so I normally
	   recommend that for cautious scanners. Omitting version detection is
	   far more effective than playing with timing values at reducing
	   these problems.

	   While -T0.  and -T1.	 may be useful for avoiding IDS alerts, they
	   will take an extraordinarily long time to scan thousands of
	   machines or ports. For such a long scan, you may prefer to set the
	   exact timing values you need rather than rely on the canned -T0 and
	   -T1 values.

	   The main effects of T0 are serializing the scan so only one port is
	   scanned at a time, and waiting five minutes between sending each
	   probe.  T1 and T2 are similar but they only wait 15 seconds and 0.4
	   seconds, respectively, between probes.  T3 is Nmap's default
	   behavior, which includes parallelization..  -T4 does the equivalent
	   of --max-rtt-timeout 1250ms --initial-rtt-timeout 500ms
	   --max-retries 6 and sets the maximum TCP scan delay to 10
	   milliseconds.  T5 does the equivalent of --max-rtt-timeout 300ms
	   --min-rtt-timeout 50ms --initial-rtt-timeout 250ms --max-retries 2
	   --host-timeout 15m as well as setting the maximum TCP scan delay to
	   5 ms.

FIREWALL/IDS EVASION AND SPOOFING
       Many Internet pioneers envisioned a global open network with a
       universal IP address space allowing virtual connections between any two
       nodes. This allows hosts to act as true peers, serving and retrieving
       information from each other. People could access all of their home
       systems from work, changing the climate control settings or unlocking
       the doors for early guests. This vision of universal connectivity has
       been stifled by address space shortages and security concerns. In the
       early 1990s, organizations began deploying firewalls for the express
       purpose of reducing connectivity. Huge networks were cordoned off from
       the unfiltered Internet by application proxies, network address
       translation, and packet filters. The unrestricted flow of information
       gave way to tight regulation of approved communication channels and the
       content that passes over them.

       Network obstructions such as firewalls can make mapping a network
       exceedingly difficult. It will not get any easier, as stifling casual
       reconnaissance is often a key goal of implementing the devices.
       Nevertheless, Nmap offers many features to help understand these
       complex networks, and to verify that filters are working as intended.
       It even supports mechanisms for bypassing poorly implemented defenses.
       One of the best methods of understanding your network security posture
       is to try to defeat it. Place yourself in the mind-set of an attacker,
       and deploy techniques from this section against your networks. Launch
       an FTP bounce scan, idle scan, fragmentation attack, or try to tunnel
       through one of your own proxies.

       In addition to restricting network activity, companies are increasingly
       monitoring traffic with intrusion detection systems (IDS). All of the
       major IDSs ship with rules designed to detect Nmap scans because scans
       are sometimes a precursor to attacks. Many of these products have
       recently morphed into intrusion prevention systems (IPS).  that
       actively block traffic deemed malicious. Unfortunately for network
       administrators and IDS vendors, reliably detecting bad intentions by
       analyzing packet data is a tough problem. Attackers with patience,
       skill, and the help of certain Nmap options can usually pass by IDSs
       undetected. Meanwhile, administrators must cope with large numbers of
       false positive results where innocent activity is misdiagnosed and
       alerted on or blocked.

       Occasionally people suggest that Nmap should not offer features for
       evading firewall rules or sneaking past IDSs. They argue that these
       features are just as likely to be misused by attackers as used by
       administrators to enhance security. The problem with this logic is that
       these methods would still be used by attackers, who would just find
       other tools or patch the functionality into Nmap. Meanwhile,
       administrators would find it that much harder to do their jobs.
       Deploying only modern, patched FTP servers is a far more powerful
       defense than trying to prevent the distribution of tools implementing
       the FTP bounce attack.

       There is no magic bullet (or Nmap option) for detecting and subverting
       firewalls and IDS systems. It takes skill and experience. A tutorial is
       beyond the scope of this reference guide, which only lists the relevant
       options and describes what they do.

       -f (fragment packets); --mtu (using the specified MTU) .
	   The -f option causes the requested scan (including ping scans) to
	   use tiny fragmented IP packets. The idea is to split up the TCP
	   header over several packets to make it harder for packet filters,
	   intrusion detection systems, and other annoyances to detect what
	   you are doing. Be careful with this! Some programs have trouble
	   handling these tiny packets. The old-school sniffer named Sniffit
	   segmentation faulted immediately upon receiving the first fragment.
	   Specify this option once, and Nmap splits the packets into eight
	   bytes or less after the IP header. So a 20-byte TCP header would be
	   split into three packets. Two with eight bytes of the TCP header,
	   and one with the final four. Of course each fragment also has an IP
	   header. Specify -f again to use 16 bytes per fragment (reducing the
	   number of fragments)..  Or you can specify your own offset size
	   with the --mtu option. Don't also specify -f if you use --mtu. The
	   offset must be a multiple of eight. While fragmented packets won't
	   get by packet filters and firewalls that queue all IP fragments,
	   such as the CONFIG_IP_ALWAYS_DEFRAG option in the Linux kernel,
	   some networks can't afford the performance hit this causes and thus
	   leave it disabled. Others can't enable this because fragments may
	   take different routes into their networks. Some source systems
	   defragment outgoing packets in the kernel. Linux with the iptables.
	   connection tracking module is one such example. Do a scan while a
	   sniffer such as Wireshark.  is running to ensure that sent packets
	   are fragmented. If your host OS is causing problems, try the
	   --send-eth.	option to bypass the IP layer and send raw ethernet
	   frames.

	   Fragmentation is only supported for Nmap's raw packet features,
	   which includes TCP and UDP port scans (except connect scan and FTP
	   bounce scan) and OS detection. Features such as version detection
	   and the Nmap Scripting Engine generally don't support fragmentation
	   because they rely on your host's TCP stack to communicate with
	   target services.

       -D decoy1[,decoy2][,ME][,...] (Cloak a scan with decoys) .
	   Causes a decoy scan to be performed, which makes it appear to the
	   remote host that the host(s) you specify as decoys are scanning the
	   target network too. Thus their IDS might report 5–10 port scans
	   from unique IP addresses, but they won't know which IP was scanning
	   them and which were innocent decoys. While this can be defeated
	   through router path tracing, response-dropping, and other active
	   mechanisms, it is generally an effective technique for hiding your
	   IP address.

	   Separate each decoy host with commas, and you can optionally use
	   ME.	as one of the decoys to represent the position for your real
	   IP address. If you put ME in the sixth position or later, some
	   common port scan detectors (such as Solar Designer's.  excellent
	   Scanlogd).  are unlikely to show your IP address at all. If you
	   don't use ME, Nmap will put you in a random position. You can also
	   use RND.  to generate a random, non-reserved IP address, or
	   RND:number to generate number addresses.

	   Note that the hosts you use as decoys should be up or you might
	   accidentally SYN flood your targets. Also it will be pretty easy to
	   determine which host is scanning if only one is actually up on the
	   network. You might want to use IP addresses instead of names (so
	   the decoy networks don't see you in their nameserver logs).

	   Decoys are used both in the initial ping scan (using ICMP, SYN,
	   ACK, or whatever) and during the actual port scanning phase. Decoys
	   are also used during remote OS detection (-O). Decoys do not work
	   with version detection or TCP connect scan. When a scan delay is in
	   effect, the delay is enforced between each batch of spoofed probes,
	   not between each individual probe. Because decoys are sent as a
	   batch all at once, they may temporarily violate congestion control
	   limits.

	   It is worth noting that using too many decoys may slow your scan
	   and potentially even make it less accurate. Also, some ISPs will
	   filter out your spoofed packets, but many do not restrict spoofed
	   IP packets at all.

       -S IP_Address (Spoof source address) .
	   In some circumstances, Nmap may not be able to determine your
	   source address (Nmap will tell you if this is the case). In this
	   situation, use -S with the IP address of the interface you wish to
	   send packets through.

	   Another possible use of this flag is to spoof the scan to make the
	   targets think that someone else is scanning them. Imagine a company
	   being repeatedly port scanned by a competitor! The -e option and
	   -Pn are generally required for this sort of usage. Note that you
	   usually won't receive reply packets back (they will be addressed to
	   the IP you are spoofing), so Nmap won't produce useful reports.

       -e interface (Use specified interface) .
	   Tells Nmap what interface to send and receive packets on. Nmap
	   should be able to detect this automatically, but it will tell you
	   if it cannot.

       --source-port portnumber; -g portnumber (Spoof source port number) .
	   One surprisingly common misconfiguration is to trust traffic based
	   only on the source port number. It is easy to understand how this
	   comes about. An administrator will set up a shiny new firewall,
	   only to be flooded with complaints from ungrateful users whose
	   applications stopped working. In particular, DNS may be broken
	   because the UDP DNS replies from external servers can no longer
	   enter the network. FTP is another common example. In active FTP
	   transfers, the remote server tries to establish a connection back
	   to the client to transfer the requested file.

	   Secure solutions to these problems exist, often in the form of
	   application-level proxies or protocol-parsing firewall modules.
	   Unfortunately there are also easier, insecure solutions. Noting
	   that DNS replies come from port 53 and active FTP from port 20,
	   many administrators have fallen into the trap of simply allowing
	   incoming traffic from those ports. They often assume that no
	   attacker would notice and exploit such firewall holes. In other
	   cases, administrators consider this a short-term stop-gap measure
	   until they can implement a more secure solution. Then they forget
	   the security upgrade.

	   Overworked network administrators are not the only ones to fall
	   into this trap. Numerous products have shipped with these insecure
	   rules. Even Microsoft has been guilty. The IPsec filters that
	   shipped with Windows 2000 and Windows XP contain an implicit rule
	   that allows all TCP or UDP traffic from port 88 (Kerberos). In
	   another well-known case, versions of the Zone Alarm personal
	   firewall up to 2.1.25 allowed any incoming UDP packets with the
	   source port 53 (DNS) or 67 (DHCP).

	   Nmap offers the -g and --source-port options (they are equivalent)
	   to exploit these weaknesses. Simply provide a port number and Nmap
	   will send packets from that port where possible. Most scanning
	   operations that use raw sockets, including SYN and UDP scans,
	   support the option completely. The option notably doesn't have an
	   effect for any operations that use normal operating system sockets,
	   including DNS requests, TCP connect scan,.  version detection, and
	   script scanning. Setting the source port also doesn't work for OS
	   detection, because Nmap must use different port numbers for certain
	   OS detection tests to work properly.

       --data-length number (Append random data to sent packets) .
	   Normally Nmap sends minimalist packets containing only a header. So
	   its TCP packets are generally 40 bytes and ICMP echo requests are
	   just 28. Some UDP ports.  and IP protocols.	get a custom payload
	   by default. This option tells Nmap to append the given number of
	   random bytes to most of the packets it sends, and not to use any
	   protocol-specific payloads. (Use --data-length 0 for no random or
	   protocol-specific payloads..	 OS detection (-O) packets are not
	   affected.  because accuracy there requires probe consistency, but
	   most pinging and portscan packets support this. It slows things
	   down a little, but can make a scan slightly less conspicuous.

       --ip-options S|R [route]|L [route]|T|U ... ; --ip-options hex string
       (Send packets with specified ip options) .
	   The IP protocol[13] offers several options which may be placed in
	   packet headers. Unlike the ubiquitous TCP options, IP options are
	   rarely seen due to practicality and security concerns. In fact,
	   many Internet routers block the most dangerous options such as
	   source routing. Yet options can still be useful in some cases for
	   determining and manipulating the network route to target machines.
	   For example, you may be able to use the record route option to
	   determine a path to a target even when more traditional
	   traceroute-style approaches fail. Or if your packets are being
	   dropped by a certain firewall, you may be able to specify a
	   different route with the strict or loose source routing options.

	   The most powerful way to specify IP options is to simply pass in
	   values as the argument to --ip-options. Precede each hex number
	   with \x then the two digits. You may repeat certain characters by
	   following them with an asterisk and then the number of times you
	   wish them to repeat. For example, \x01\x07\x04\x00*36\x01 is a hex
	   string containing 36 NUL bytes.

	   Nmap also offers a shortcut mechanism for specifying options.
	   Simply pass the letter R, T, or U to request record-route,.
	   record-timestamp,.  or both options together, respectively. Loose
	   or strict source routing.  may be specified with an L or S followed
	   by a space and then a space-separated list of IP addresses.

	   If you wish to see the options in packets sent and received,
	   specify --packet-trace. For more information and examples of using
	   IP options with Nmap, see http://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2006/q3/52.

       --ttl value (Set IP time-to-live field) .
	   Sets the IPv4 time-to-live field in sent packets to the given
	   value.

       --randomize-hosts (Randomize target host order) .
	   Tells Nmap to shuffle each group of up to 16384 hosts before it
	   scans them. This can make the scans less obvious to various network
	   monitoring systems, especially when you combine it with slow timing
	   options. If you want to randomize over larger group sizes, increase
	   PING_GROUP_SZ.  in nmap.h.  and recompile. An alternative solution
	   is to generate the target IP list with a list scan (-sL -n -oN
	   filename), randomize it with a Perl script, then provide the whole
	   list to Nmap with -iL..

       --spoof-mac MAC address, prefix, or vendor name (Spoof MAC address) .
	   Asks Nmap to use the given MAC address for all of the raw ethernet
	   frames it sends. This option implies --send-eth.  to ensure that
	   Nmap actually sends ethernet-level packets. The MAC given can take
	   several formats. If it is simply the number 0, Nmap chooses a
	   completely random MAC address for the session. If the given string
	   is an even number of hex digits (with the pairs optionally
	   separated by a colon), Nmap will use those as the MAC. If fewer
	   than 12 hex digits are provided, Nmap fills in the remainder of the
	   six bytes with random values. If the argument isn't a zero or hex
	   string, Nmap looks through nmap-mac-prefixes to find a vendor name
	   containing the given string (it is case insensitive). If a match is
	   found, Nmap uses the vendor's OUI (three-byte prefix).  and fills
	   out the remaining three bytes randomly. Valid --spoof-mac argument
	   examples are Apple, 0, 01:02:03:04:05:06, deadbeefcafe, 0020F2, and
	   Cisco. This option only affects raw packet scans such as SYN scan
	   or OS detection, not connection-oriented features such as version
	   detection or the Nmap Scripting Engine.

       --badsum (Send packets with bogus TCP/UDP checksums) .
	   Asks Nmap to use an invalid TCP, UDP or SCTP checksum for packets
	   sent to target hosts. Since virtually all host IP stacks properly
	   drop these packets, any responses received are likely coming from a
	   firewall or IDS that didn't bother to verify the checksum. For more
	   details on this technique, see http://nmap.org/p60-12.html

       --adler32 (Use deprecated Adler32 instead of CRC32C for SCTP checksums)
       .
	   Asks Nmap to use the deprecated Adler32 algorithm for calculating
	   the SCTP checksum. If --adler32 is not given, CRC-32C (Castagnoli)
	   is used.  RFC 2960[14] originally defined Adler32 as checksum
	   algorithm for SCTP; RFC 4960[7] later redefined the SCTP checksums
	   to use CRC-32C. Current SCTP implementations should be using
	   CRC-32C, but in order to elicit responses from old, legacy SCTP
	   implementations, it may be preferable to use Adler32.

OUTPUT
       Any security tool is only as useful as the output it generates. Complex
       tests and algorithms are of little value if they aren't presented in an
       organized and comprehensible fashion. Given the number of ways Nmap is
       used by people and other software, no single format can please
       everyone. So Nmap offers several formats, including the interactive
       mode for humans to read directly and XML for easy parsing by software.

       In addition to offering different output formats, Nmap provides options
       for controlling the verbosity of output as well as debugging messages.
       Output types may be sent to standard output or to named files, which
       Nmap can append to or clobber. Output files may also be used to resume
       aborted scans.

       Nmap makes output available in five different formats. The default is
       called interactive output,.  and it is sent to standard output
       (stdout)..  There is also normal output,.  which is similar to
       interactive except that it displays less runtime information and
       warnings since it is expected to be analyzed after the scan completes
       rather than interactively.

       XML output.  is one of the most important output types, as it can be
       converted to HTML, easily parsed by programs such as Nmap graphical
       user interfaces, or imported into databases.

       The two remaining output types are the simple grepable output.  which
       includes most information for a target host on a single line, and
       sCRiPt KiDDi3 0utPUt.  for users who consider themselves |<-r4d.

       While interactive output is the default and has no associated
       command-line options, the other four format options use the same
       syntax. They take one argument, which is the filename that results
       should be stored in. Multiple formats may be specified, but each format
       may only be specified once. For example, you may wish to save normal
       output for your own review while saving XML of the same scan for
       programmatic analysis. You might do this with the options -oX
       myscan.xml -oN myscan.nmap. While this chapter uses the simple names
       like myscan.xml for brevity, more descriptive names are generally
       recommended. The names chosen are a matter of personal preference,
       though I use long ones that incorporate the scan date and a word or two
       describing the scan, placed in a directory named after the company I'm
       scanning.

       While these options save results to files, Nmap still prints
       interactive output to stdout as usual. For example, the command nmap
       -oX myscan.xml target prints XML to myscan.xml and fills standard
       output with the same interactive results it would have printed if -oX
       wasn't specified at all. You can change this by passing a hyphen
       character as the argument to one of the format types. This causes Nmap
       to deactivate interactive output, and instead print results in the
       format you specified to the standard output stream. So the command nmap
       -oX - target will send only XML output to stdout..  Serious errors may
       still be printed to the normal error stream, stderr..

       Unlike some Nmap arguments, the space between the logfile option flag
       (such as -oX) and the filename or hyphen is mandatory. If you omit the
       flags and give arguments such as -oG- or -oXscan.xml, a backwards
       compatibility feature of Nmap will cause the creation of normal format
       output files named G- and Xscan.xml respectively.

       All of these arguments support strftime-like.  conversions in the
       filename.  %H, %M, %S, %m, %d, %y, and %Y are all exactly the same as
       in strftime.  %T is the same as %H%M%S, %R is the same as %H%M, and %D
       is the same as %m%d%y. A % followed by any other character just yields
       that character (%% gives you a percent symbol). So -oX 'scan-%T-%D.xml'
       will use an XML file with a name in the form of scan-144840-121307.xml.

       Nmap also offers options to control scan verbosity and to append to
       output files rather than clobbering them. All of these options are
       described below.

       Nmap Output Formats

       -oN filespec (normal output) .
	   Requests that normal output be directed to the given filename. As
	   discussed above, this differs slightly from interactive output.

       -oX filespec (XML output) .
	   Requests that XML output be directed to the given filename. Nmap
	   includes a document type definition (DTD) which allows XML parsers
	   to validate Nmap XML output. While it is primarily intended for
	   programmatic use, it can also help humans interpret Nmap XML
	   output. The DTD defines the legal elements of the format, and often
	   enumerates the attributes and values they can take on. The latest
	   version is always available from
	   https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/docs/nmap.dtd.

	   XML offers a stable format that is easily parsed by software. Free
	   XML parsers are available for all major computer languages,
	   including C/C++, Perl, Python, and Java. People have even written
	   bindings for most of these languages to handle Nmap output and
	   execution specifically. Examples are Nmap::Scanner[15].  and
	   Nmap::Parser[16].  in Perl CPAN. In almost all cases that a
	   non-trivial application interfaces with Nmap, XML is the preferred
	   format.

	   The XML output references an XSL stylesheet which can be used to
	   format the results as HTML. The easiest way to use this is simply
	   to load the XML output in a web browser such as Firefox or IE. By
	   default, this will only work on the machine you ran Nmap on (or a
	   similarly configured one) due to the hard-coded nmap.xsl filesystem
	   path. Use the --webxml or --stylesheet options to create portable
	   XML files that render as HTML on any web-connected machine.

       -oS filespec (ScRipT KIdd|3 oUTpuT) .
	   Script kiddie output is like interactive output, except that it is
	   post-processed to better suit the l33t HaXXorZ who previously
	   looked down on Nmap due to its consistent capitalization and
	   spelling. Humor impaired people should note that this option is
	   making fun of the script kiddies before flaming me for supposedly
	   “helping them”.

       -oG filespec (grepable output) .
	   This output format is covered last because it is deprecated. The
	   XML output format is far more powerful, and is nearly as convenient
	   for experienced users. XML is a standard for which dozens of
	   excellent parsers are available, while grepable output is my own
	   simple hack. XML is extensible to support new Nmap features as they
	   are released, while I often must omit those features from grepable
	   output for lack of a place to put them.

	   Nevertheless, grepable output is still quite popular. It is a
	   simple format that lists each host on one line and can be trivially
	   searched and parsed with standard Unix tools such as grep, awk,
	   cut, sed, diff, and Perl. Even I usually use it for one-off tests
	   done at the command line. Finding all the hosts with the SSH port
	   open or that are running Solaris takes only a simple grep to
	   identify the hosts, piped to an awk or cut command to print the
	   desired fields.

	   Grepable output consists of comments (lines starting with a pound
	   (#)).  and target lines. A target line includes a combination of
	   six labeled fields, separated by tabs and followed with a colon.
	   The fields are Host, Ports, Protocols, Ignored State, OS, Seq
	   Index, IP ID, and Status.

	   The most important of these fields is generally Ports, which gives
	   details on each interesting port. It is a comma separated list of
	   port entries. Each port entry represents one interesting port, and
	   takes the form of seven slash (/) separated subfields. Those
	   subfields are: Port number, State, Protocol, Owner, Service, SunRPC
	   info, and Version info.

	   As with XML output, this man page does not allow for documenting
	   the entire format. A more detailed look at the Nmap grepable output
	   format is available from
	   http://nmap.org/book/output-formats-grepable-output.html.

       -oA basename (Output to all formats) .
	   As a convenience, you may specify -oA basename to store scan
	   results in normal, XML, and grepable formats at once. They are
	   stored in basename.nmap, basename.xml, and basename.gnmap,
	   respectively. As with most programs, you can prefix the filenames
	   with a directory path, such as ~/nmaplogs/foocorp/ on Unix or
	   c:\hacking\sco on Windows.

       Verbosity and debugging options

       -v (Increase verbosity level) .
	   Increases the verbosity level, causing Nmap to print more
	   information about the scan in progress. Open ports are shown as
	   they are found and completion time estimates are provided when Nmap
	   thinks a scan will take more than a few minutes. Use it twice or
	   more for even greater verbosity: -vv, or give a verbosity level
	   directly, for example -v3..

	   Most changes only affect interactive output, and some also affect
	   normal and script kiddie output. The other output types are meant
	   to be processed by machines, so Nmap can give substantial detail by
	   default in those formats without fatiguing a human user. However,
	   there are a few changes in other modes where output size can be
	   reduced substantially by omitting some detail. For example, a
	   comment line in the grepable output that provides a list of all
	   ports scanned is only printed in verbose mode because it can be
	   quite long.

       -d (Increase debugging level) .
	   When even verbose mode doesn't provide sufficient data for you,
	   debugging is available to flood you with much more! As with the
	   verbosity option (-v), debugging is enabled with a command-line
	   flag (-d) and the debug level can be increased by specifying it
	   multiple times,.  as in -dd, or by setting a level directly. For
	   example, -d9 sets level nine. That is the highest effective level
	   and will produce thousands of lines unless you run a very simple
	   scan with very few ports and targets.

	   Debugging output is useful when a bug is suspected in Nmap, or if
	   you are simply confused as to what Nmap is doing and why. As this
	   feature is mostly intended for developers, debug lines aren't
	   always self-explanatory. You may get something like: Timeout vals:
	   srtt: -1 rttvar: -1 to: 1000000 delta 14987 ==> srtt: 14987 rttvar:
	   14987 to: 100000. If you don't understand a line, your only
	   recourses are to ignore it, look it up in the source code, or
	   request help from the development list (nmap-dev)..	Some lines are
	   self explanatory, but the messages become more obscure as the debug
	   level is increased.

       --reason (Host and port state reasons) .
	   Shows the reason each port is set to a specific state and the
	   reason each host is up or down. This option displays the type of
	   the packet that determined a port or hosts state. For example, A
	   RST packet from a closed port or an echo reply from an alive host.
	   The information Nmap can provide is determined by the type of scan
	   or ping. The SYN scan and SYN ping (-sS and -PS) are very detailed,
	   but the TCP connect scan (-sT) is limited by the implementation of
	   the connect system call. This feature is automatically enabled by
	   the debug option (-d).  and the results are stored in XML log files
	   even if this option is not specified.

       --stats-every time (Print periodic timing stats) .
	   Periodically prints a timing status message after each interval of
	   time. The time is a specification of the kind described in the
	   section called “TIMING AND PERFORMANCE”; so for example, use
	   --stats-every 10s to get a status update every 10 seconds. Updates
	   are printed to interactive output (the screen) and XML output.

       --packet-trace (Trace packets and data sent and received) .
	   Causes Nmap to print a summary of every packet sent or received.
	   This is often used for debugging, but is also a valuable way for
	   new users to understand exactly what Nmap is doing under the
	   covers. To avoid printing thousands of lines, you may want to
	   specify a limited number of ports to scan, such as -p20-30. If you
	   only care about the goings on of the version detection subsystem,
	   use --version-trace instead. If you only care about script tracing,
	   specify --script-trace. With --packet-trace, you get all of the
	   above.

       --open (Show only open (or possibly open) ports) .
	   Sometimes you only care about ports you can actually connect to
	   (open ones), and don't want results cluttered with closed,
	   filtered, and closed|filtered ports. Output customization is
	   normally done after the scan using tools such as grep, awk, and
	   Perl, but this feature was added due to overwhelming requests.
	   Specify --open to only see hosts with at least one open,
	   open|filtered, or unfiltered port, and only see ports in those
	   states. These three states are treated just as they normally are,
	   which means that open|filtered and unfiltered may be condensed into
	   counts if there are an overwhelming number of them.

       --iflist (List interfaces and routes) .
	   Prints the interface list and system routes as detected by Nmap.
	   This is useful for debugging routing problems or device
	   mischaracterization (such as Nmap treating a PPP connection as
	   ethernet).

       Miscellaneous output options

       --append-output (Append to rather than clobber output files) .
	   When you specify a filename to an output format flag such as -oX or
	   -oN, that file is overwritten by default. If you prefer to keep the
	   existing content of the file and append the new results, specify
	   the --append-output option. All output filenames specified in that
	   Nmap execution will then be appended to rather than clobbered. This
	   doesn't work well for XML (-oX) scan data as the resultant file
	   generally won't parse properly until you fix it up by hand.

       --resume filename (Resume aborted scan) .
	   Some extensive Nmap runs take a very long time—on the order of
	   days. Such scans don't always run to completion. Restrictions may
	   prevent Nmap from being run during working hours, the network could
	   go down, the machine Nmap is running on might suffer a planned or
	   unplanned reboot, or Nmap itself could crash. The administrator
	   running Nmap could cancel it for any other reason as well, by
	   pressing ctrl-C. Restarting the whole scan from the beginning may
	   be undesirable. Fortunately, if normal (-oN) or grepable (-oG) logs
	   were kept, the user can ask Nmap to resume scanning with the target
	   it was working on when execution ceased. Simply specify the
	   --resume option and pass the normal/grepable output file as its
	   argument. No other arguments are permitted, as Nmap parses the
	   output file to use the same ones specified previously. Simply call
	   Nmap as nmap --resume logfilename. Nmap will append new results to
	   the data files specified in the previous execution. Resumption does
	   not support the XML output format because combining the two runs
	   into one valid XML file would be difficult.

       --stylesheet path or URL (Set XSL stylesheet to transform XML output) .
	   Nmap ships with an XSL.  stylesheet.	 named nmap.xsl.  for viewing
	   or translating XML output to HTML..	The XML output includes an
	   xml-stylesheet directive which points to nmap.xml where it was
	   initially installed by Nmap. Run the XML file through an XSLT
	   processor such as xsltproc[17].  to produce an HTML file. Directly
	   opening the XML file in a browser no longer works well because
	   modern browsers limit the locations a stylesheet may be loaded
	   from. If you wish to use a different stylesheet, specify it as the
	   argument to --stylesheet. You must pass the full pathname or URL.
	   One common invocation is --stylesheet
	   http://nmap.org/svn/docs/nmap.xsl. This tells an XSLT processor to
	   load the latest version of the stylesheet from Nmap.Org. The
	   --webxml option does the same thing with less typing and
	   memorization. Loading the XSL from Nmap.Org makes it easier to view
	   results on a machine that doesn't have Nmap (and thus nmap.xsl)
	   installed. So the URL is often more useful, but the local
	   filesystem location of nmap.xsl is used by default for privacy
	   reasons.

       --webxml (Load stylesheet from Nmap.Org) .
	   This is a convenience option, nothing more than an alias for
	   --stylesheet http://nmap.org/svn/docs/nmap.xsl.

       --no-stylesheet (Omit XSL stylesheet declaration from XML) .
	   Specify this option to prevent Nmap from associating any XSL
	   stylesheet with its XML output. The xml-stylesheet directive is
	   omitted.

MISCELLANEOUS OPTIONS
       This section describes some important (and not-so-important) options
       that don't really fit anywhere else.

       -6 (Enable IPv6 scanning) .
	   Nmap has IPv6 support for its most popular features. Ping scanning,
	   port scanning, version detection, and the Nmap Scripting Engine all
	   support IPv6. The command syntax is the same as usual except that
	   you also add the -6 option. Of course, you must use IPv6 syntax if
	   you specify an address rather than a hostname. An address might
	   look like 3ffe:7501:4819:2000:210:f3ff:fe03:14d0, so hostnames are
	   recommended. The output looks the same as usual, with the IPv6
	   address on the “interesting ports” line being the only IPv6
	   giveaway.

	   While IPv6 hasn't exactly taken the world by storm, it gets
	   significant use in some (usually Asian) countries and most modern
	   operating systems support it. To use Nmap with IPv6, both the
	   source and target of your scan must be configured for IPv6. If your
	   ISP (like most of them) does not allocate IPv6 addresses to you,
	   free tunnel brokers are widely available and work fine with Nmap. I
	   use the free IPv6 tunnel broker.  service at
	   http://www.tunnelbroker.net. Other tunnel brokers are listed at
	   Wikipedia[18]. 6to4 tunnels are another popular, free approach.

	   On Windows, raw-socket IPv6 scans are supported only on ethernet
	   devices (not tunnels), and only on Windows Vista.  and later. Use
	   the --unprivileged.	option in other situations.

       -A (Aggressive scan options) .
	   This option enables additional advanced and aggressive options. I
	   haven't decided exactly which it stands for yet. Presently this
	   enables OS detection (-O), version scanning (-sV), script scanning
	   (-sC) and traceroute (--traceroute)..  More features may be added
	   in the future. The point is to enable a comprehensive set of scan
	   options without people having to remember a large set of flags.
	   However, because script scanning with the default set is considered
	   intrusive, you should not use -A against target networks without
	   permission. This option only enables features, and not timing
	   options (such as -T4) or verbosity options (-v) that you might want
	   as well.

       --datadir directoryname (Specify custom Nmap data file location) .
	   Nmap obtains some special data at runtime in files named
	   nmap-service-probes, nmap-services, nmap-protocols, nmap-rpc,
	   nmap-mac-prefixes, and nmap-os-db. If the location of any of these
	   files has been specified (using the --servicedb or --versiondb
	   options), that location is used for that file. After that, Nmap
	   searches these files in the directory specified with the --datadir
	   option (if any). Any files not found there, are searched for in the
	   directory specified by the NMAPDIR.	environment variable. Next
	   comes ~/.nmap.  for real and effective UIDs; or on Windows,
	   HOME\AppData\Roaming\nmap (where HOME is the user's home directory,
	   like C:\Users\user). This is followed by the location of the nmap
	   executable and the same location with ../share/nmap appended. Then
	   a compiled-in location such as /usr/local/share/nmap or
	   /usr/share/nmap.

       --servicedb services file (Specify custom services file) .
	   Asks Nmap to use the specified services file rather than the
	   nmap-services data file that comes with Nmap. Using this option
	   also causes a fast scan (-F) to be used. See the description for
	   --datadir for more information on Nmap's data files.

       --versiondb service probes file (Specify custom service probes file) .
	   Asks Nmap to use the specified service probes file rather than the
	   nmap-service-probes data file that comes with Nmap. See the
	   description for --datadir for more information on Nmap's data
	   files.

       --send-eth (Use raw ethernet sending) .
	   Asks Nmap to send packets at the raw ethernet (data link) layer
	   rather than the higher IP (network) layer. By default, Nmap chooses
	   the one which is generally best for the platform it is running on.
	   Raw sockets (IP layer).  are generally most efficient for Unix
	   machines, while ethernet frames are required for Windows operation
	   since Microsoft disabled raw socket support. Nmap still uses raw IP
	   packets on Unix despite this option when there is no other choice
	   (such as non-ethernet connections).

       --send-ip (Send at raw IP level) .
	   Asks Nmap to send packets via raw IP sockets rather than sending
	   lower level ethernet frames. It is the complement to the --send-eth
	   option discussed previously.

       --privileged (Assume that the user is fully privileged) .
	   Tells Nmap to simply assume that it is privileged enough to perform
	   raw socket sends, packet sniffing, and similar operations that
	   usually require root privileges.  on Unix systems. By default Nmap
	   quits if such operations are requested but geteuid is not zero.
	   --privileged is useful with Linux kernel capabilities and similar
	   systems that may be configured to allow unprivileged users to
	   perform raw-packet scans. Be sure to provide this option flag
	   before any flags for options that require privileges (SYN scan, OS
	   detection, etc.). The NMAP_PRIVILEGED.  environment variable may be
	   set as an equivalent alternative to --privileged.

       --unprivileged (Assume that the user lacks raw socket privileges) .
	   This option is the opposite of --privileged. It tells Nmap to treat
	   the user as lacking network raw socket and sniffing privileges.
	   This is useful for testing, debugging, or when the raw network
	   functionality of your operating system is somehow broken. The
	   NMAP_UNPRIVILEGED.  environment variable may be set as an
	   equivalent alternative to --unprivileged.

       --release-memory (Release memory before quitting) .
	   This option is only useful for memory-leak debugging. It causes
	   Nmap to release allocated memory just before it quits so that
	   actual memory leaks are easier to spot. Normally Nmap skips this as
	   the OS does this anyway upon process termination.

       -V; --version (Print version number) .
	   Prints the Nmap version number and exits.

       -h; --help (Print help summary page) .
	   Prints a short help screen with the most common command flags.
	   Running Nmap without any arguments does the same thing.

RUNTIME INTERACTION
       During the execution of Nmap, all key presses are captured. This allows
       you to interact with the program without aborting and restarting it.
       Certain special keys will change options, while any other keys will
       print out a status message telling you about the scan. The convention
       is that lowercase letters increase the amount of printing, and
       uppercase letters decrease the printing. You may also press ‘?’ for
       help.

       v / V
	   Increase / decrease the verbosity level

       d / D
	   Increase / decrease the debugging Level

       p / P
	   Turn on / off packet tracing

       ?
	   Print a runtime interaction help screen

       Anything else
	   Print out a status message like this:

	       Stats: 0:00:07 elapsed; 20 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Service Scan
	       Service scan Timing: About 33.33% done; ETC: 20:57 (0:00:12 remaining)

EXAMPLES
       Here are some Nmap usage examples, from the simple and routine to a
       little more complex and esoteric. Some actual IP addresses and domain
       names are used to make things more concrete. In their place you should
       substitute addresses/names from your own network. While I don't think
       port scanning other networks is or should be illegal, some network
       administrators don't appreciate unsolicited scanning of their networks
       and may complain. Getting permission first is the best approach.

       For testing purposes, you have permission to scan the host
       scanme.nmap.org..  This permission only includes scanning via Nmap and
       not testing exploits or denial of service attacks. To conserve
       bandwidth, please do not initiate more than a dozen scans against that
       host per day. If this free scanning target service is abused, it will
       be taken down and Nmap will report Failed to resolve given hostname/IP:
       scanme.nmap.org. These permissions also apply to the hosts
       scanme2.nmap.org, scanme3.nmap.org, and so on, though those hosts do
       not currently exist.

       nmap -v scanme.nmap.org

       This option scans all reserved TCP ports on the machine scanme.nmap.org
       . The -v option enables verbose mode.

       nmap -sS -O scanme.nmap.org/24

       Launches a stealth SYN scan against each machine that is up out of the
       256 IPs on the class C sized network where Scanme resides. It also
       tries to determine what operating system is running on each host that
       is up and running. This requires root privileges because of the SYN
       scan and OS detection.

       nmap -sV -p 22,53,110,143,4564 198.116.0-255.1-127

       Launches host enumeration and a TCP scan at the first half of each of
       the 255 possible eight-bit subnets in the 198.116 class B address
       space. This tests whether the systems run SSH, DNS, POP3, or IMAP on
       their standard ports, or anything on port 4564. For any of these ports
       found open, version detection is used to determine what application is
       running.

       nmap -v -iR 100000 -Pn -p 80

       Asks Nmap to choose 100,000 hosts at random and scan them for web
       servers (port 80). Host enumeration is disabled with -Pn since first
       sending a couple probes to determine whether a host is up is wasteful
       when you are only probing one port on each target host anyway.

       nmap -Pn -p80 -oX logs/pb-port80scan.xml -oG logs/pb-port80scan.gnmap
       216.163.128.20/20

       This scans 4096 IPs for any web servers (without pinging them) and
       saves the output in grepable and XML formats.

NMAP BOOK
       While this reference guide details all material Nmap options, it can't
       fully demonstrate how to apply those features to quickly solve
       real-world tasks. For that, we released Nmap Network Scanning: The
       Official Nmap Project Guide to Network Discovery and Security Scanning.
       Topics include subverting firewalls and intrusion detection systems,
       optimizing Nmap performance, and automating common networking tasks
       with the Nmap Scripting Engine. Hints and instructions are provided for
       common Nmap tasks such as taking network inventory, penetration
       testing, detecting rogue wireless access points, and quashing network
       worm outbreaks. Examples and diagrams show actual communication on the
       wire. More than half of the book is available free online. See
       http://nmap.org/book for more information.

BUGS
       Like its author, Nmap isn't perfect. But you can help make it better by
       sending bug reports or even writing patches. If Nmap doesn't behave the
       way you expect, first upgrade to the latest version available from
       http://nmap.org. If the problem persists, do some research to determine
       whether it has already been discovered and addressed. Try searching for
       the error message on our search page at http://insecure.org/search.html
       or at Google. Also try browsing the nmap-dev archives at
       http://seclists.org/..  Read this full manual page as well. If nothing
       comes of this, mail a bug report to nmap-dev@insecure.org. Please
       include everything you have learned about the problem, as well as what
       version of Nmap you are running and what operating system version it is
       running on. Problem reports and Nmap usage questions sent to
       nmap-dev@insecure.org are far more likely to be answered than those
       sent to Fyodor directly. If you subscribe to the nmap-dev list before
       posting, your message will bypass moderation and get through more
       quickly. Subscribe at
       http://cgi.insecure.org/mailman/listinfo/nmap-dev.

       Code patches to fix bugs are even better than bug reports. Basic
       instructions for creating patch files with your changes are available
       at https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/HACKING. Patches may be sent to nmap-dev
       (recommended) or to Fyodor directly.

AUTHOR
       Gordon “Fyodor” Lyon fyodor@insecure.org (http://insecure.org)

       Hundreds of people have made valuable contributions to Nmap over the
       years. These are detailed in the CHANGELOG.  file which is distributed
       with Nmap and also available from http://nmap.org/changelog.html.

LEGAL NOTICES
   Nmap Copyright and Licensing
       The Nmap Security Scanner is (C) 1996–2012 Insecure.Com LLC. Nmap is
       also a registered trademark of Insecure.Com LLC. This program is free
       software; you may redistribute and/or modify it under the terms of the
       GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software
       Foundation; Version 2 with the clarifications and exceptions described
       below. This guarantees your right to use, modify, and redistribute this
       software under certain conditions. If you wish to embed Nmap technology
       into proprietary software, we sell alternative licenses (contact
       sales@insecure.com). Dozens of software vendors already license Nmap
       technology such as host discovery, port scanning, OS detection, and
       version detection.

       Note that the GPL places important restrictions on “derived works”, yet
       it does not provide a detailed definition of that term. To avoid
       misunderstandings, we consider an application to constitute a
       “derivative work” for the purpose of this license if it does any of the
       following:

       ·   Integrates source code from Nmap

       ·   Reads or includes Nmap copyrighted data files, such as nmap-os-db
	   or nmap-service-probes.

       ·   Executes Nmap and parses the results (as opposed to typical shell
	   or execution-menu apps, which simply display raw Nmap output and so
	   are not derivative works.)

       ·   Integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap into a proprietary executable
	   installer, such as those produced by InstallShield.

       ·   Links to a library or executes a program that does any of the
	   above.

       The term “Nmap” should be taken to also include any portions or derived
       works of Nmap. This list is not exclusive, but is meant to clarify our
       interpretation of derived works with some common examples. Our
       interpretation applies only to Nmap—we don't speak for other people's
       GPL works.

       If you have any questions about the GPL licensing restrictions on using
       Nmap in non-GPL works, we would be happy to help. As mentioned above,
       we also offer alternative license to integrate Nmap into proprietary
       applications and appliances. These contracts have been sold to many
       security vendors, and generally include a perpetual license as well as
       providing for priority support and updates as well as helping to fund
       the continued development of Nmap technology. Please email
       sales@insecure.com for further information.

       As a special exception to the GPL terms, Insecure.Com LLC grants
       permission to link the code of this program with any version of the
       OpenSSL library which is distributed under a license identical to that
       listed in the included COPYING.OpenSSL file, and distribute linked
       combinations including the two..	 You must obey the GNU GPL in all
       respects for all of the code used other than OpenSSL. If you modify
       this file, you may extend this exception to your version of the file,
       but you are not obligated to do so.

       If you received these files with a written license agreement or
       contract stating terms other than the terms above, then that
       alternative license agreement takes precedence over these comments.

   Creative Commons License for this Nmap Guide
       This Nmap Reference Guide is (C) 2005–2012 Insecure.Com LLC. It is
       hereby placed under version 3.0 of the Creative Commons Attribution
       License[19]. This allows you redistribute and modify the work as you
       desire, as long as you credit the original source. Alternatively, you
       may choose to treat this document as falling under the same license as
       Nmap itself (discussed previously).

   Source Code Availability and Community Contributions
       Source is provided to this software because we believe users have a
       right to know exactly what a program is going to do before they run it.
       This also allows you to audit the software for security holes (none
       have been found so far).

       Source code also allows you to port Nmap to new platforms, fix bugs,
       and add new features. You are highly encouraged to send your changes to
       nmap-dev@insecure.org for possible incorporation into the main
       distribution. By sending these changes to Fyodor or one of the
       Insecure.Org development mailing lists, it is assumed that you are
       offering the Nmap Project (Insecure.Com LLC) the unlimited,
       non-exclusive right to reuse, modify, and relicense the code. Nmap will
       always be available open source,.  but this is important because the
       inability to relicense code has caused devastating problems for other
       Free Software projects (such as KDE and NASM). We also occasionally
       relicense the code to third parties as discussed above. If you wish to
       specify special license conditions of your contributions, just say so
       when you send them.

   No Warranty.
       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
       WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
       MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
       General Public License v2.0 for more details at
       http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html, or in the COPYING file
       included with Nmap.

       It should also be noted that Nmap has occasionally been known to crash
       poorly written applications, TCP/IP stacks, and even operating
       systems..  While this is extremely rare, it is important to keep in
       mind.  Nmap should never be run against mission critical systems unless
       you are prepared to suffer downtime. We acknowledge here that Nmap may
       crash your systems or networks and we disclaim all liability for any
       damage or problems Nmap could cause.

   Inappropriate Usage
       Because of the slight risk of crashes and because a few black hats like
       to use Nmap for reconnaissance prior to attacking systems, there are
       administrators who become upset and may complain when their system is
       scanned. Thus, it is often advisable to request permission before doing
       even a light scan of a network.

       Nmap should never be installed with special privileges (e.g. suid
       root)..	That would open up a major security vulnerability as other
       users on the system (or attackers) could use it for privilege
       escalation.

   Third-Party Software and Funding Notices
       This product includes software developed by the Apache Software
       Foundation[20]. A modified version of the Libpcap portable packet
       capture library[21].  is distributed along with Nmap. The Windows
       version of Nmap utilized the Libpcap-derived WinPcap library[22].
       instead. Regular expression support is provided by the PCRE
       library[23],.  which is open-source software, written by Philip Hazel..
       Certain raw networking functions use the Libdnet[24].  networking
       library, which was written by Dug Song..	 A modified version is
       distributed with Nma.p Nmap can optionally link with the OpenSSL
       cryptography toolkit[25].  for SSL version detection support. The Nmap
       Scripting Engine uses an embedded version of the Lua programming
       language[26]..  The Liblinear linear classification library[27] is used
       for our IPv6 OS detection machine learning techniques[28].

       All of the third-party software described in this paragraph is freely
       redistributable under BSD-style software licenses.

       Binary packages for Windows and Mac OS X include support libraries
       necessary to run Zenmap and Ndiff with Python and PyGTK. (Unix
       platforms commonly make these libraries easy to install, so they are
       not part of the packages.) A listing of these support libraries and
       their licenses is included in the LICENSES files.

       This software was supported in part through the Google Summer of
       Code[29] and the DARPA CINDER program[30] (DARPA-BAA-10-84).

   United States Export Control.
       Nmap only uses encryption when compiled with the optional OpenSSL
       support and linked with OpenSSL. When compiled without OpenSSL support,
       Insecure.Com LLC believes that Nmap is not subject to U.S.  Export
       Administration Regulations (EAR)[31] export control. As such, there is
       no applicable ECCN (export control classification number) and
       exportation does not require any special license, permit, or other
       governmental authorization.

       When compiled with OpenSSL support or distributed as source code,
       Insecure.Com LLC believes that Nmap falls under U.S. ECCN 5D002[32]
       (“Information Security Software”). We distribute Nmap under the TSU
       exception for publicly available encryption software defined in EAR
       740.13(e)[33].

NOTES
	1. Nmap Network Scanning: The Official Nmap Project Guide to Network
	   Discovery and Security Scanning
	   http://nmap.org/book/

	2. RFC 1122
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1122.txt

	3. RFC 792
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc792.txt

	4. RFC 950
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc950.txt

	5. RFC 1918
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1918.txt

	6. UDP
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc768.txt

	7. SCTP
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4960.txt

	8. TCP RFC
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc793.txt

	9. RFC 959
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc959.txt

       10. RFC 1323
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1323.txt

       11. Lua programming language
	   http://lua.org

       12. precedence
	   http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#2.5.3

       13. IP protocol
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc791.txt

       14. RFC 2960
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2960.txt

       15. Nmap::Scanner
	   http://sourceforge.net/projects/nmap-scanner/

       16. Nmap::Parser
	   http://nmapparser.wordpress.com/

       17. xsltproc
	   http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/

       18. listed at Wikipedia
	   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IPv6_tunnel_brokers

       19. Creative Commons Attribution License
	   http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

       20. Apache Software Foundation
	   http://www.apache.org

       21. Libpcap portable packet capture library
	   http://www.tcpdump.org

       22. WinPcap library
	   http://www.winpcap.org

       23. PCRE library
	   http://www.pcre.org

       24. Libdnet
	   http://libdnet.sourceforge.net

       25. OpenSSL cryptography toolkit
	   http://www.openssl.org

       26. Lua programming language
	   http://www.lua.org

       27. Liblinear linear classification library
	   http://www.csie.ntu.edu.tw/~cjlin/liblinear/

       28. IPv6 OS detection machine learning techniques
	   http://nmap.org/book/osdetect-guess.html#osdetect-guess-ipv6

       29. Google Summer of Code
	   http://nmap.org/soc/

       30. DARPA CINDER program
	   https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=585e02a51f77af5cb3c9e06b9cc82c48&tab=core&_cview=1

       31. Export Administration Regulations (EAR)
	   http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/ear_data.html

       32. 5D002
	   http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/ccl5-pt2.pdf

       33. EAR 740.13(e)
	   http://www.access.gpo.gov/bis/ear/pdf/740.pdf

Nmap				  11/29/2012			       NMAP(1)
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