To do this, simply use the ‘-sC’ argument, as shown below: That’s why the Nmap team has built an ‘-sC’ option, which lets you run the top Nmap scripts at once. When you’re dealing with over 600 scripts, it isn’t easy to find the most popular ones by inspecting them one by one. While writing these scripts can sometimes be quite difficult, their usage is fairly simple, as are most Nmap arguments and options. The Nmap vuln category includes vulnerability detection and exploitation scripts
OS, service and software detection scripts Malware detections and exploration scripts Used to perform fussing attacks against apps, services or networksĪll the ‘aggressive’ scripts that cause a lot of network noise Scripts that rely on 3rd party services or data Used to perform service exploitation on different CVEs Scripts related to network, service and host discoveryĭenial of service attack scripts used to test and perform DOS and floods The most popular Nmap scripts, using -sC by default Set of scripts for performing brute force attacks to guess access credentials Network discovery scripts that use broadcast petitions for intel gathering Nmap Script NameĪll sorts of authentication and user privilege scripts Let’s analyze the different categories of Nmap scripts. Postrule scripts: These are run after the entire Nmap scan has finished, and are often useful for parsing, formatting and presenting the different results.These include http service scripts, for example, which can be run against web servers. Service scripts: These are a particular set of Nmap scripts that are run against services on the remote host.Host scripts: Once the Nmap default scan has finished the host exploration, detection, port scanning or software discovery, it will perform the host scripts.Prerule scripts: These types of scripts run before the rest of any scanning operation, while Nmap doesn’t have any data about the remote target.When we talk about writing NSE scripts, there are four different types that can help us enhance the default Nmap features, depending on the target and the scanning phase in which they are run. In particular, you’ll be able to perform any sort of DNS enumeration, brute force attack, OS fingerprinting and banner grabbing, vulnerability detection and exploitation, backdoor identification, malware discovery, and much more. With nearly 600 scripts at your fingertips, there’s almost no infosec research task you can’t accomplish. The only requirement for you to write these scripts is that they must be coded using the Lua programming language. One of the best things about NSE is its ability to let users write and share their own scripts, so you’re not limited to relying on the Nmap default NSE scripts. "You are trying to run Zenmap with a non-root user! Some Nmap options need root privileges to work.Stay ahead of your digital fingerprint Boost your asset discovery process with Attack Surface Reduction Request access to ASR What is the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE)?Īs explained in our Nmap Cheat Sheet, NSE stands for Nmap Scripting Engine, and it’s basically a digital library of Nmap scripts that helps to enhance the default Nmap features and report the results in a traditional Nmap output. However, Zenmap 6.25 and earlier will print a warning at startup: ~/.xsessionrc, for most graphical environments and inherited by all terminals and shellsĪs long as it inherits NMAP_PRIVILEGED, Zenmap will run Nmap with these capabilities.Add the export line to one of the following: You can save the extra typing by setting the NMAP_PRIVILEGED environmental variable. You must explicitly tell nmap that it has these capabilities: Sudo setcap cap_net_raw,cap_net_admin,cap_net_bind_service+eip /usr/bin/nmap
Be sure to specify the full path to wherever you installed Nmap: To set these capabilities, you must use the "setcap" command, which may not be installed. Alternately, consider the group "sudo" (Ubuntu 12.04 or later), "admin" (Ubuntu before 12.04), or "wheel" (Red Hat systems). “adm” is a good choice for most distributions, as console users are generally members. If you do not understand these risks, do not do this.īefore setting capabilities, restrict Nmap access to certain groups. It's possible, especially with elevated capabilities, for a clever person to use Nmap and NSE to escalate to full root privileges. The Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) allows scripts to sniff the network, change firewall roules and interface configuration, or exploit vulnerabilities including on localhost.