Nmap Command Examples - Full Tutorial

Let’s get to know a few useful command-line based best Nmap scans that can be performed.

1. Basic Nmap Scan against IP or host

nmap [Link]

Now, if you want to scan a hostname, simply replace the IP for the host, as you see below:

nmap [Link]

This kind of scans, such as the Nmap scan host are perfect for your first steps when starting with
Nmap.

2. Nmap Ping Scan

nmap -sp [Link]/24

The most famous type of scan is the Nmap ping scan (so-called because it’s often used to perform
Nmap ping sweeps), and it’s the easiest way to detect hosts on any network.

The drawback of this ICMP-only type of scan is that remote hosts often block IP-based ping packets,
so if you’re unable to get solid results, we recommend switching to ARP-based requests for your
scan.

3. Scan specific ports or scan entire port ranges on a local or remote server

nmap -p 1-65535 localhost

In this example, we scanned all 65535 ports for our localhost computer.

Nmap is able to scan all possible ports, but you can also scan specific ports, which will report faster
results. See below:

nmap -p 80,443 [Link]

4. Scan multiple IP addresses

Let’s try to scan multiple IP addresses. For this you need to use this syntax:

nmap [Link] [Link]

You can also scan consecutive IP addresses:

nmap [Link],2,3,4

This will scan [Link], [Link], [Link] and [Link].

5. Scan IP ranges

You can also use Nmap to scan entire CIDR IP ranges, for example:

nmap [Link]/28

This will scan 14 consecutive IP ranges, from [Link] to [Link].

An alternative is to simply use this kind of range:

nmap [Link]-14
You can even use wildcards to scan the entire C class IP range, for example:

nmap 8.8.8.*

This will scan 256 IP addresses from [Link] to [Link].

If you ever need to exclude certain IPs from the IP range scan, you can use the “–exclude” option, as
you see below:

nmap -p 8.8.8.* --exclude [Link]

6. Scan the most popular ports

Using “–top-ports” parameter along with a specific number lets you scan the top X most common
ports for that host, as we can see:

nmap --top-ports 20 [Link]

Replace “20” with the desired number. Output example:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap --top-ports 20 localhost

Starting Nmap 6.40 at 2018-10-01 10:02 EDT
Nmap scan report for localhost ([Link])
Host is up (0.000016s latency).
Other addresses for localhost (not scanned): [Link]
PORT STATE SERVICE
21/tcp closed ftp
22/tcp closed ssh
23/tcp closed telnet
25/tcp closed smtp
53/tcp closed domain
80/tcp filtered http
110/tcp closed pop3
111/tcp closed rpcbind
135/tcp closed msrpc
139/tcp closed netbios-ssn
143/tcp closed imap
443/tcp filtered https
445/tcp closed microsoft-ds
993/tcp closed imaps
995/tcp closed pop3s
1723/tcp closed pptp
3306/tcp closed mysql
3389/tcp closed ms-wbt-server
5900/tcp closed vnc
8080/tcp closed http-proxy

7. Scan hosts and IP addresses reading from a text file

In this case, Nmap is also useful to read files that contain hosts and IPs inside.

Let’s suppose you create a [Link] file that contains these lines inside:
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]

The “-iL” parameter lets you read from that file, and scan all those hosts for you:

nmap -iL [Link]

8. Save your Nmap scan results to a file

On the other hand, in the following example we will not be reading from a file, but exporting/saving
our results into a text file:

nmap -oN [Link] [Link]

Nmap has the ability to export files into XML format as well, see the next example:

nmap -oX [Link] [Link]

9. Disabling DNS name resolution

If you need to speed up your scans a little bit, you can always choose to disable reverse DNS
resolution for all your scans. Just add the “-n” parameter.

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -p 80 -n [Link]
Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:15 -03
Nmap scan report for [Link]
Host is up (0.014s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp filtered http

See the difference with a normal DNS-resolution enabled scan:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -p 80 [Link]
Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:15 -03
Nmap scan report for [Link] .com ([Link])
Host is up (0.014s latency).
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp filtered http

10. Scan + OS and service detection with fast execution

Using the “-A” parameter enables you to perform OS and service detection, and at the same time we
are combining this with “-T4” for faster execution. See the example below:

nmap -A -T4 [Link]

This is the output we got for this test:

11. Detect service/daemon versions

This can be done by using -sV parameters

nmap -sV localhost

As you can see here:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -sV localhost

Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:28 -03
Nmap scan report for localhost ([Link])
Host is up (0.000020s latency).
Other addresses for localhost (not scanned): ::1
Not shown: 997 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
111/tcp open rpcbind 2-4 (RPC #100000)
631/tcp open ipp CUPS 2.2
902/tcp open ssl/vmware-auth VMware Authentication Daemon 1.10 (Uses VNC, SOAP)

Service detection performed. Please report any incorrect results at https:// nmap .org/submit/ .
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 7.96 seconds

12. Scan using TCP or UDP protocols

One of the things we love most about Nmap is the fact that it works for both TCP and UDP protocols.
And while most services run on TCP, you can also get a great advantage by scanning UDP-based
services. Let’s see some examples.

Standard TCP scanning output:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -sT [Link]

Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:33 -03
Nmap scan report for [Link]
Host is up (0.58s latency).
Not shown: 995 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
1900/tcp open upnp
20005/tcp open btx
49152/tcp open unknown
49153/tcp open unknown
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1.43 seconds

UDP scanning results using “-sU” parameter:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -sU localhost

Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:37 -03
Nmap scan report for localhost ([Link])
Host is up (0.000021s latency).
Other addresses for localhost (not scanned): ::1
Not shown: 997 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
68/udp open|filtered dhcpc
111/udp open rpcbind
5353/udp open|filtered zeroconf

13. CVE detection using Nmap

One of Nmap’s greatest features that not all the network and systems administrators know about is
something called “Nmap Scripting Engine” (known as NSE). This scripting engine allows users to use
a pre-defined set of scripts, or write their own using Lua programming language.

Using Nmap scripts is crucial in order to automate system and vulnerability scans. For example, if
you want to run a full vulnerability test against your target, you can use these parameters:

nmap -Pn --script vuln [Link]

Output example:

[root@securitytrails:~]nmap -Pn --script vuln [Link]

Starting Nmap 7.60 at 2018-10-01 09:46 -03
Pre-scan script results:
| broadcast-avahi-dos:
| Discovered hosts:
| [Link]
| After NULL UDP avahi packet DoS (CVE-2011-1002).
|_ Hosts are all up (not vulnerable).
Nmap scan report for [Link]
Host is up (0.00032s latency).
Not shown: 995 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
|_http-csrf: Couldn't find any CSRF vulnerabilities.
|_http-dombased-xss: Couldn't find any DOM based XSS.
| http-slowloris-check:
| VULNERABLE:
| Slowloris DOS attack
| State: LIKELY VULNERABLE
| IDs: CVE:CVE-2007-6750
| Slowloris tries to keep many connections to the target web server open and hold
| them open as long as possible. It accomplishes this by opening connections to
| the target web server and sending a partial request. By doing so, it starves
| the http server's resources causing Denial Of Service.
|
| Disclosure date: 2009-09-17
| References:
|_ https:// [Link] .org/cgi-bin/[Link]?name=CVE-2007-6750
|_http-stored-xss: Couldn't find any stored XSS vulnerabilities.
|_http-vuln-cve2014-3704: ERROR: Script execution failed (use -d to debug)
1900/tcp open upnp
20005/tcp open btx
49152/tcp open unknown
49153/tcp open unknown

As you can see, in this vulnerability test we were able to detect one CVE (Slowloris DOS attack).

14. Flood testing with Nmap

Nmap features never seem to end, and thanks to the NSE, that even allows us to launch flood
attacks against our network to test how effective our mitigation methods are.

In our previous example (#12) we found the host was vulnerable to Slowloris attack, and now we’ll
try to exploit that vulnerability by launching a flood attack in a forever loop:

nmap [Link] -max-parallelism 800 -Pn --script http-slowloris --script-args http-

[Link]=true

15. Testing brute force attacks

NSE is really fascinating -- it contains scripts for everything you can imagine. See the next three
examples of BFA against WordPress, MSSQL, and FTP server:

nmap -sV --script http-wordpress-brute --script-args 'userdb=[Link],passdb=[Link],http-

[Link]=[Link], [Link]=3,[Link]=true'
[Link]

WordPress brute force attack:

nmap -p 1433 --script ms-sql-brute --script-args userdb=[Link],passdb=[Link]

[Link]

Brute force attack against MS-SQL:

nmap -p 1433 --script ms-sql-brute --script-args userdb=[Link],passdb=[Link]

[Link]

FTP brute force attack:

nmap --script ftp-brute -p 21 [Link]

16. Detecting malware infections on remote hosts

Nmap is able to detect malware and backdoors by running extensive tests on a few popular OS
services like Identd, Proftpd, Vsftpd, IRC, SMB, and SMTP. It also has a module to check for popular
malware signs inside remote servers and integrates Google’s Safe Browsing and VirusTotal databases
as well.

A common malware scan can be performed by using:

nmap -sV --script=http-malware-host [Link]

Or using Google’s Malware check:

nmap -p80 --script http-google-malware [Link]

Output example:

Nmap is one of the most complete and accurate port scanners used by infosec professionals today.
With it, you can perform simple port scan tasks or use its powerful scripting engine to launch DOS
attacks, detect malware or brute force testing on remote and local servers.

Today we covered the top fifteen Nmap commands to scan remote hosts, but there’s a lot more to
discover if you’re starting to use Nmap in your OSINT strategy.