Vulnerability scanning with Nmap
There are no security operating distributions without Nmap. So far, we have discussed how to utilize Nmap during active reconnaissance, but attackers don’t just use Nmap to find open ports and services, but also engage Nmap to perform the vulnerability assessment. As of December 21, 2021, the latest version of Nmap is 7.92 and it ships with 600+ NSE scripts, as shown in Figure 4.5:
Figure 4.5: Viewing all the scripts in the /usr/share/nmap/scripts folder
Penetration testers utilize Nmap’s most powerful and flexible features, which allow them to write their own scripts and also automate them to simplify the exploitation. Primarily, the NSE was developed for the following reasons:
- Network discovery: The primary purpose that attackers utilize Nmap for is network discovery, as we learned in the active reconnaissance section in Chapter 3, Active Reconnaissance of External and Internal Networks.
- Classier version...
