Listing VTAM application screens

VTAM screens are used by many mainframes to access applications such as CICS, IMS, TSO, and more. Since the application IDs are limited to only 8 bytes, it is possible to brute-force them to find VTAM screens.

The following recipe will show you how to use Nmap to brute-force and list valid VTAM application IDs.

How to do it...

To enumerate VTAM application IDs, use the following Nmap command:

$ nmap -sV --script vtam-enum <target>

All VTAM application IDs found will be listed underneath the output of the vtam-enum script:

PORT   STATE SERVICE VERSION
23/tcp open  tn3270  IBM Telnet TN3270
| vtam-enum:
|   VTAM Application ID:
|     applid:TSO - Valid credentials
|     applid:CICSTS51 - Valid credentials
|_  Statistics: Performed 14 guesses in 5 seconds, average tps: 2

Additionally, to avoid depending on any external...