Nmap Network Security Scanner

Nmap, the Network Mapper, is a free and open-source utility for network discovery and security auditing created by Gordon Fyodor Lyon in 1997, with over 128,000 mailing list subscribers and millions of downloads. The latest version 7.99 provides comprehensive network reconnaissance capabilities including TCP and UDP port scanning with techniques such as SYN scan, connect scan, ACK scan, FIN scan, Xmas scan, Null scan, idle scan, and FTP bounce scan, enabling penetration testers and administrators to determine what hosts are available, what services they offer, what operating systems they run, and what packet filters or firewalls are in use. The Nmap Scripting Engine contains over 600 community-contributed scripts for vulnerability detection, network discovery, backdoor detection, password auditing, and exploitation, written in the Lua programming language with the Nsock library for asynchronous network I/O. The tool suite includes Zenmap, an advanced cross-platform graphical front-end with topology mapping and scan comparison, Ncat for flexible data transfer and network redirection as a Netcat replacement, Ndiff for comparing scan results to track network changes, and Nping for packet generation and response analysis. Nmap has been named Security Product of the Year by Linux Journal, InfoWorld, LinuxQuestions.org, and Codetalker Digest, and has been featured in twelve major motion pictures including The Matrix Reloaded, The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4, and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The companion book Nmap Network Scanning provides comprehensive documentation. Npcap, the Windows packet capture driver developed alongside Nmap, reached version 1.00 after seven years of development and serves as the foundation for packet capture on Windows systems used by security tools worldwide.