Nmap: From Movies to the Most Used Tool in the Industry

They say movies are not real life; they are just a way to create more illusions in our minds. However, the answer is relative. Movies are a great way to inspire us to learn and innovate for the present and future.

With sci-fi, what we saw 20 or 30 years ago is now a part of our daily life: the touch screen, the metaverse, robots working in some plants around the world, and the domination of artificial intelligence. Soon, we may attain singularity, as proven by brilliant minds like Raymond Kurzweil.

Mr. Robot, Chloe O'Brien, how many people inspired us to become computer nerds through the movies?

Nmap is seen in different successful movies like Ocean 8, The Matrix Reloaded, and Die-Hard 4, and there’s a great tribe of curious learners after watching some footage!

Are you one of them?

Let’s discover together!

What is Nmap?

Nmap or Network Mapper is a free and open-source utility used by network engineers for network discovery and audits. A network admin can use the utility to scan active network devices, the service they are running, and open ports.

In pen testing, white or black hat hackers can use Nmap to scan and discover vulnerabilities on target computers; it’s written in the Lua language and is still the favorite daily companion for pen testers and network admins.

Nmap gives three primary functionalities:

Nmap gives 3 primary functionalities:

• shows detailed information on every active network and each IP address
• helps to identify security vulnerabilities
• shows a list of active hosts and identifies the operating system of every connected device

Nmap basics

The best way to know the tool is through daily practice. Let’s discover basic commands to train your brain and fingers as future pen testers.

in our short demo, we use Nmap on Ubuntu our favorite Linux distribution, you can also use it on Windows but Linux remains the best kernel to test advanced things in security.

if Nmap is already installed on your Ubuntu, you can skip the installation, here we show the installation if it’s not done yet on your computer.

installing Nmap

sudo apt install nmap: To install, you need a higher privilege as root “sudo.”

Once the utility is installed, run “nmap” in the shell; the version will be displayed, and additional arguments to add to the utility.

Checking Nmap options on Ubuntu

nmap: displays the version, and options to make the most of the utility. Let’s scan a host with an IP address of 172.20.120.174 to see if it’s active.

The result shows an active host with a state of “up”.

Let’s scan www.nasa.gov to get some details about the scan

nmap –vv: gives more details about the scan. The output shows the time a ping was initiated, the website, and the number of ports scanned.

nmap -A: to enable operating system detection, version detection, and script scanning. In the output, we can see Android running.

Now you have some basic knowledge of Nmap, open your shell and go further by testing more commands.

Challenge

Open your shell and run these five commands to discover nmap

• sudo apt install nmap to install the utility in your shell
• nmap by targeting an IP address in your local network
• nmap -vv followed by a website of your choice to get some details
• nmap -A to detect the operating system of a target machine
• nmap -Pn –script vuln followed by the IP address of your target PC to discover vulnerabilities

Conclusion

Movies have the power to inspire us to explore beyond fiction. Some movies aim to inspire a wide audience to learn and embrace new technologies.

There are various ways to educate ourselves, such as through books, podcasts, and documentaries.

Learning and inspiration can lead to exponential growth.

Also published here.