TryHackMe - Nmap

Posted June 15, 2020 · 2 min read
tryhackme
nmap
tools

nmap is a port-scan tool, gathering information by sending raw packets to system ports. Depending on the information it gets back it classifies ports as being open, closed or filtered. Filtered means that nmap cannot determine whether it is open or closed.

Note that nmap is very loud. Meaning that using nmap is not anonymous, and network administrators will know when such a scan is done.

Example Scan

A basic example of a nmap scan is:

nmap -F scanme.nmap.org
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2020-06-14 07:28 EDT
Nmap scan report for scanme.nmap.org (45.33.32.156)
Host is up (0.084s latency).
Other addresses for scanme.nmap.org (not scanned): 2600:3c01::f03c:91ff:fe18:bb2f
Not shown: 92 closed ports
PORT      STATE    SERVICE
22/tcp    open     ssh
25/tcp    filtered smtp
80/tcp    open     http
646/tcp   filtered ldp
1755/tcp  filtered wms
9100/tcp  filtered jetdirect
10000/tcp filtered snet-sensor-mgmt
49154/tcp filtered unknown

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 5.37 seconds

As seen above, ports 22 and 80 are open, while a bunch of others have a status of filtered.

Inthe above example, we have used the flag -F, which stands for fast, which only scans the top 100 ports of the given IP / Domain. By default running nmap without any flags will scan the top 1000 ports only.

Useful Flags

FlagDescription
--openOnly shows open ports
-sVAttempts to determine the sevices versions of any services running on the open ports
-OTries to determine the Operating System
-FScans top 100 ports
-pGive a port number or range of ports to scan
-p-Scan all the ports
-vVerbose mode, for displaying output onto terminal
-sCUses default scripting in nmap
-oNSave output to a normal file (linux >> also works fine)
-AEnable OS detection, version detection, script scanning and traceroute

There are still many flags which can be seen in nmap --help or more detail in man nmap.