Nmap is of course of the most famous port scanners and hacking tools of all time, the last stable release was back in July 2009.

For those that may not know, Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.

Nmap 5.20 offers more than 150 significant improvements, including:

• 30+ new Nmap Scripting Engine scripts
• Enhanced performance and reduced memory consumption
• Protocol-specific payloads for more effectie UDP scanning
• A completely rewritten traceroute engine
• Massive OS and version detection DB updates (10,000+ signatures)

You can download Nmap 5.21 here (more options):

Linux – nmap-5.21.tgz
Windows – nmap-5.21-win32.zip

Or read more here.

At last a new major release of Nmap!

If for some odd reason you don’t already know what Nmap is, it is a free and open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics.

The changelog shows 320 changes since 4.00 with a lot of great stuff in this release! It has a brand new GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a scripting engine allowing you to write your own scripts for high-performance network discovery (or use one of the 40 scripts shipped with it), the 2nd generation OS detection system (now with more than a thousand fingerprints), nearly 1,500 more version detection signatures, and a lot more!

Zenmap is the official Nmap Security Scanner GUI. It is a multi-platform (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, etc.) free and open source application which aims to make Nmap easy for beginners to use while providing advanced features for experienced Nmap users. Frequently used scans can be saved as profiles to make them easy to run repeatedly. A command creator allows interactive creation of Nmap command lines. Scan results can be saved and viewed later. Saved scan results can be compared with one another to see how they differ. The results of recent scans are stored in a searchable database.

More on Zenmap here:

Zenmap – the Nmap GUI

You can download the new Nmap here:

Nmap 4.50

Or read more here.

Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free open source utility for network exploration or security auditing. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, although it works fine against single hosts. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. Nmap runs on most types of computers and both console and graphical versions are available. Nmap is free and open source.

Things that we consider userful in the extensive announcement are:

• Added the ability for Nmap to send and properly route raw ethernet frames containing IP datagrams rather than always sending the packets via raw sockets. This is particularly useful for Windows, since Microsoft has disabled raw socket support in XP. Nmap tries to choose the best method at runtime based on platform, though you can override it with the new –send-eth and –send-ip options.
• Added ARP scanning (-PR). Nmap can now send raw ethernet ARP requests to determine whether hosts on a LAN are up, rather than relying on higher-level IP packets (which can only be sent after a successful ARP request and reply anyway). This is much faster and more reliable (not subject to IP-level firewalling) than IP-based probes. It is now used automatically for any hosts that are detected to be on a local ethernet network, unless –send-ip was specified.
• Overhauled UDP scan. Ports that don’t respond are now classified as “open|filtered” (open or filtered) rather than “open”. The (somewhat rare) ports that actually respond with a UDP packet to the empty probe are considered open. If version detection is requested, it will be performed on open|filtered ports. Any that respond to any of the UDP probes will have their status changed to open. This avoids the false-positive problem where filtered UDP ports appear to be open, leading to terrified newbies thinking their machine is infected by back orifice.
• Integrated tons of new OS detection fingerprints. The database grew more than 50% from 1,121 to 1,684 fingerprints. Notable additions include Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), OpenBSD 3.7, FreeBSD 5.4, Windows Server 2003 SP1, Sony AIBO (along with a new “robotic pet” device type category), the latest Linux 2.6 kernels, Cisco routers with IOS 12.4, a ton of VoIP devices, Tru64 UNIX 5.1B, new Fortinet firewalls, AIX 5.3, NetBSD 2.0, Nokia IPSO 3.8.X, and Solaris 10. Of course there are also tons of new broadband routers, printers, WAPs and pretty much any other device you can coax an ethernet cable (or wireless card) into!

There is also a completely new man page, you can view it online too.

Fyodor has also given an interview on the release on Nmap 4.