Nmap 4.00 With Fyodor

After more than eight years since its first release in Phrack magazine,
Fyodor has announced Nmap 4.00. Curious as usual, Federico Biancuzzi
interviewed Fyodor on behalf of SecurityFocus to discuss the new port
scanning engine, version detection improvements, and the new stack
fingerprinting algorithm under work by the community.

Could you introduce yourself?

Fyodor: I'm a long-time network security enthusiast with a particular
interest in full disclosure and the offensive side of security. I have
gained a lot from the security community over the years, and try to
contribute back by releasing free tools such as my Nmap Security
Scanner and publishing useful content on my websites, Insecure.Org and
Seclists.Org. I am also an active member of the Honeynet Project.
Writing has been a major recent focus of mine. Last year I co-authored
a technical security novel named Stealing the Network: How to Own a
Continent, and I'm almost finished with a network scanning book. This
is all on top of my active and varied social life. OK, I'm just kidding
about that last part. smile.gif

You just released Nmap 4.00 after two years of work since 3.50. What
are the most exciting changes?

Fyodor: Well, the Changelog shows more than 230 improvements since that
release, so it is hard to choose just a few favorites. But some really
do stand out. The port scanning engine has been rewritten to be much
faster and (after the "diet Nmap" project) more memory efficient. The
low-level packet sending subsystem has changed dramatically as well.
Nmap can now send and route raw Ethernet frames rather than rely on the
host's raw sockets implementation. This is critical for Windows, since
Microsoft disabled raw sockets as of Windows XP SP2. And all platforms
benefit from the new ARP scanning and MAC address spoofing
functionality that this change allows.

Nmap 4.0 has new, better organized and more comprehensive
documentation, including a rewritten man page available in seven
languages. Huge improvements have also been made in version detection,
which offers many new features and saw its signature database triple in
size.

Many Nmap users pick runtime interaction as their favorite new feature.
If you find yourself staring at the screen wondering when Nmap will
finish, just press [enter] for an estimate. If you forgot to enable
verbose mode, press 'v' to enable it. Or press 'V' to turn it off.
Packet tracing and debugging can be enabled or disabled on a whim as
well.

for the rest of the interview, head over to ::
http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/384