Slashdot Mirror
Nmap Developers Release a Picture of the Web
iago-vL writes "The Nmap Project recently posted an awesome visualization of the top million site icons (favicons) on the Web, sized by relative popularity of sites. This project used the Nmap Scripting Engine, which is capable of performing discovery, vulnerability detection, and anything else you can imagine with lightning speed. We saw last month how an Nmap developer downloaded 170 million Facebook names, and this month it's a million favicons; I wonder what they'll do next?"
Plus, Trinity uses Nmap. Who knows, maybe she used it to visualize The Matrix in her spare time?
"We're going to Disney Land!" - NMAP Team
If only I could find a way to make money off other people's stupidity...
Go into politics.
*sigh* If only I could find a way to make money off other people's stupidity...
Start a religion? I'm too honest, personally, but it's worked for others.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
http://nmap.org/favicon/?q=slashdot.org
just an FYI: Its based on data from Alexa. Despite what Alexa claims, I find the results to be off by an order of magnitude from true traffic.
I do, it's called "consulting".
Incidentally, just to the right of the Slashdot icon lives Virgin
/. crowd, methinks...
A little too close to home for the
I was really struck by this image, actually. It gives you a visual feel for how vast the net is, with all the favicons stretching back into space until they're just indistinguishable dots. And for those who complain about uselessness, download it and give it a go yourself! To get ranges, just use whois or a http://www.iana.org/numbers/ search on a relevant ip/hostname, and to map routing paths use the zenmap frontend - the radial visualization is great, but a bit slow for large numbers. You can also use the -oX option to output a scan in XML, and import it into zenmap later; zenmap also aggregates scans for you. The script scan engine is also geared towards penetration testing/exploitation, of course, but you can ignore "offensive" parts. Just remember to read the documentation, if you want to keep a low profile.
Emotions! In your brain!
I think the nmap.org icon just grew exponentially.
OTOH, sometimes it doesn't work out so well.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
"The company website is *down*", laments a snivelling luser on my way in through the door.
"Ah, is it, then? Excellent! I'll take care of it in my office." The luser unfortunately shadows me through the hallway, running through my RFID-secured doorway after I open it. My office is dimly lit, with one focus bulb shining on a poster behind my monitor. I sit at my terminal, browsing my e-mail while drinking my coffee.
"But the website..."
I sigh. Why do they seem most hopeful when I try to ignore them so thoroughly? I gesture to the illuminated poster hanging on my wall. It's a massive framed artwork from Nmap's team of the favicons of the web's most visited websites. Customized slightly, of course. Where our site sits at the farthest edge of the bottom left of the page, I have mounted a microscopic flag with the tiny words "You Are Here" written on it in gold.
There is silence as the luser peers at the poster. Then, I hear a small, soul-crushed whimper as he finds his grand company's place on the web, and hear him shuffle from the room, and my door softly close behind him. I grin. Sometimes, it's all too easy to crush souls on Monday mornings...
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.