Celebrating The 19th Anniversary of Nmap (phrack.org)

Long-time Slashdot reader collinl writes: Nmap was released 19 years ago on September 1... Seems like it has been around for ever. Was there a port scanner before Nmap?
Good question. Nmap first appeared in an article in Phrack magazine back in 1997 (which included its complete source code), although over the years its output options have expanded to include a humorous "script kiddie" format. And by 2007 the Nmap Scripting Engine was released, which in 2010 was used to generate a cool visualization showing the popularity of the top million favicons.

Comments

So simple, so useful

[BringsApples]

I love you Nmap, happy belated bday.

Re:So simple, so useful

[David_Hart]

I love you Nmap, happy belated bday.

19th Anniversary... WTH... Wake me up when it is 25 years old... No one celebrates their 19th unless that is the local drinking age...

Re:So simple, so useful

[BringsApples]

Wake me up when it is 25 years old... No one celebrates their 19th...

Not sure what's more odder, not celebrating your 19th birthday (or any birthday for that matter), only celebrating your 25 birthday (WTH happens at 25 besides the possibility of a car insurance discount), or the fact that I used the phrase "Not sure what's more odder".

"Good question" answered in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

The article explains that nmap, by far, is not the first:

Prior to writing nmap, I spent a lot of time with other scanners exploring the Internet and various private networks (note the avoidance of the "intranet" buzzword). I have used many of the top scanners available today, including strobe by Julian Assange, netcat by *Hobbit*, stcp by Uriel Maimon, pscan by Pluvius, ident-scan by Dave Goldsmith, and the SATAN tcp/udp scanners by Wietse Venema. These are all excellent scanners! In fact, I ended up hacking most of them to support the best features of the others. Finally I decided to write a whole new scanner, rather than rely on hacked versions of a dozen different scanners in my /usr/local/sbin. While I wrote all the code, nmap uses a lot of good ideas from its predecessors. I also incorporated some new stuff like fragmentation scanning and options that were on my "wish list" for other scanners.

Re:"Good question" answered in the article

[ngc5194]

I also remember something called "portscan" that was part of the FireWall Tool Kit (fwtk). If I recall correctly, I was using it as early as 1993. I don't recall by how much it predated my use.

Yes. Lots of earlier port scanners.

[Anonymous Coward]

I was using port scanners from at least 1991, although I assume some existed before hand.

That said, omg, was nmap a great step forward.

--Q

netcat stdin | od

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah baby

Yes, Yes there were port scanners before nmap

[Anonymous Coward]

Satan, & later an early type of ids, known respectively as Satan & archangel.
http://ftp.porcupine.org/pub/s...

Rest in Peace Dan, you were fewked over by idiots & died way too soon.

Always one of the first things I install

[93 Escort Wagon]

At first blush I t seems like nmap has such a narrow use case; but it's so bloody useful under lots of different circumstances.

Does anyone ever use the gui version though (zenmap)? I don't really see the point, except perhaps on Windows...

nmap rock

[Cederic]

These days people use a mix of tools, but nmap remains useful and fantastic.

Re:nmap rock

[hcs_$reboot]

For those who don't know `nmap` it's convenient and easy to use.

Re:Lockdown

[epyT-R]

It's always good practice to verify from a remote host.

Matrix?

[isham]

What, no mention of it's use by Trinity in Matrix 2?