Introducing port scanning with Nmap

In this section, we review the Nmap tool for port scanning and the main scanning types that it supports. We will learn about Nmap as a port scanner that allows us to analyze the ports and services that run on a machine.

Introducing to port scanning

Once I have identified endpoints within our network, the next step is to perform a port scan. Computers that support communication protocols utilize ports in order to make connections. In order to support different conversations with multiple applications, ports are used to distinguish various communications in the same machine or server. For example, web servers can use the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to provide access to a web page which...