June 21 -- Our web servers are struggling to cope with the load after a hacker posted what he claimed were spoilers for the upcoming book Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. These were posted to a mailing list (fulldisclosure) which we automatically archive, and we have no idea if they are true or not. Reading them could affect your enjoyment of the book! So you might prefer to pre-order the book and be patient until July 21 release date instead. But if you really want the (possibly false) spoilers, here they are. Our bandwidth graph shows that Harry Potter is a little more popular than our normal topic of network security:

Update: Nmap 4.21ALPHA4 is now available on the download page. It includes experimental support for the Nmap Scripting Engine.

After a six-month development series with 13 beta releases, Insecure.Org is pleased to announce the immediate, free availability of the Nmap Security Scanner version 4.20 from the Nmap download page.

Changes in this release include a second generation OS detection system, IP option support (source routing, record route, etc.), an --open option for showing only open ports, version detection database updates, more detailed XML output, and dozens of bug fixes and performance enhancements. The full list of changes since 4.11 can be read at the Nmap changelog.

Top 100 Security Tools List Released

After the tremendously successful 2000 and 2003 top security tools surveys, we are pleased to release our 2006 results at a brand new site: SecTools.Org. A record 3,243 Nmap users responded this year. Notable trends since 2003 include the rise in exploitation frameworks such as Metasploit, Impact, and Canvas; the increased popularity of wireless tools such as Kismet and Aircrack. 44 tools are new to the list. Security practitioners are encouraged to read the list and investigate tools they aren't familiar with. You may find the little gem that you never knew you needed.

English Sectools Coverage: Digg, Slashdot, About.Com, LinuxSecurity.Com, SANS ISC, TAOSecurity, del.icio.us, SecuriTeam, gHacks, iHacked

International: Menéame (Spanish), Kriptopolis (Spanish), ITPro Security (Japanese), Security.NL (Dutch), Todo-Linux (Spanish), CriticalSecurity (Lithuanian), Xakep (Russian)

SecLists.Org Back Up and Running

Our popular SecLists.Org public mailing list archive is back up and running after it was inexcusably shut down with no notice by our soon-to-be-former domain registrar GoDaddy at the behest of MySpace.Com. We believe web site content is the responsibility of the site owner (registrant) and (if that fails) hosting or bandwidth provider. If the whois contact data is valid, registrars shouldn't be involved without a court order.

News reports and discussion of the shutdown:
CNET News.Com | Wired | Wired #2 | Slashdot | Digg | Politech | Web Host Industry Reviews | SecurityFocus | Info World | Domain Name Wire | P2PNet | SecurityPro News | Digital MediaWire | SecuriTeam | Tech Dirt | Mashable | SecLog

Update: We have just launched NoDaddy.Com to document GoDaddy's abuses of their registrar status.

Nmap 4.00 Released

After two years of work since the 3.50 release, Insecure.Org is pleased to announce the immediate, free availability of the Nmap Security Scanner version 4.00 from http://insecure.org/nmap/ .

Changes since version 3.50 include a rewritten (for speed and memory efficiency) port scanning engine, ARP scanning, a brand new man page and install guide, 'l33t ASCII art, runtime interaction, massive version detection improvements, MAC address spoofing, increased Windows performance, 500 new OS detection fingerprints, and completion time estimates. Dozens of other important changes -- and future plans for Nmap -- are listed in the release announcement.

Updates:
Fyodor has given a SecurityFocus interview on 4.00
More English coverage/reviews: Information Security Magazine, Slashdot, Linux Weekly News (LWN), Digg, SANS ISC, OSNews, AllYourTech.Com, LinuxSecurity.Com
International coverage: Heise (German), LinuxFR (French), OpenNET (Russian), derStandard (Austrian), Golem.de (German), Hacking.PL (Polish), WinFuture (German), Kriptopolis (Spanish), Security.NL (Dutch), Tweakers.Net (Dutch), Xakep (Russian)

Security List Archive Updated

RSS feeds have been added to all security mailing lists archived at SecLists.Org, making it even easier to keep up with the latest news from Nmap-Hackers, Nmap-Dev, Bugtraq, and all of the others. We have also added Dailydave, a highly technical discussion list covers vulnerability research, exploit development, and security events/gossip (with many smart people participating).

NSA Loads Nmap Release Status for President Bush Visit

US President George W. Bush visited the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade in January 2006. A wall-sized status screen in the background displays the latest versions of Nmap and some of our other favorite open source tools. Pictures were printed in the February 6, 2006 edition of Newsweek (article) and the Jan 27 Washington Post (article). The page on the screen is the Talisker Radar. We don't like the NSA tracking our phone calls and email, but they may track Nmap releases all they want.

Loading an external web site on their giant screen was risky. Imagine if this happened (thanks php0t)!
Nmap was also used in a movie named The Listening about NSA spying (details)
Meanwhile, Nmap makes an appearance at Walmart with the Nmap hacking chair

New Nmap Man Page

We are proud to announce that the Nmap man page has been completely rewritten. It is more comprehensive (double the length) and much better organized than the previous one. It is meant to serve as a quick-reference to virtually all Nmap command-line arguments, but you can learn even more about Nmap by reading it straight through. The 18 sections include Brief Options Summary, Firewall/IDS Evasion and Spoofing, Timing and Performance, Port Scanning Techniques, Usage Examples , and much more. It even documents some cool features that are slated for release in the next Nmap version (runtime interaction and parallel DNS resolution).

The new man page is best read in HTML format, though you can alternatively download the Nroff nmap.1 to install on your system.

We have issued a call for translations of the reference guide, and 29 languages are in progress. See the new documentation page to volunteer or read a translation.

More to Read

After reading the new man page, you might enjoy the following:

• The Version Detection paper has been substantially updated and expanded. This is one of Nmap's coolest and most powerful features.
• Fyodor has given an Interview for Whitedust.Net. You can read previous interviews of Fyodor from Slashdot, Zone-H, and TuxJournal
• Fyodor and Nmap appear in a Comic Book (!) by those crazy Zone-H folks. You can view the third issue of Hero-Z online from their site, or download the PDF (11MB) for offline reading.
• Fyodor has written a new Nmap Install Guide, which covers Nmap compilation, installation, and removal on many platforms.
• The documentation page has been rewritten to include even more material.

Fyodor has co-authored a novel on hacking, along with FX, Joe Grand, Kevin Mitnick, Ryan Russell, Jay Beale, and several others. Their individual stories combine to describe a massive electronic financial heist. While the work is fiction, hacks are described in depth using real technology such as Nmap, Hping2, OpenSSL, etc. Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent can be purchased at Amazon (save $17), and your can read Fyodor's chapter online for free. STC was a best-seller, ranking for a while as the second-highest selling computer book on Amazon.

Update: Syngress has released a sequel: Stealing the Network: How to Own an Identity. They have generously allowed Fyodor to post his favorite chapter for free. So enjoy Bl@ckTo\/\/3r, by Nmap contributor Brian Hatch. It is full of wry humor and creative security conundrums to keep the experts entertained, while it also offers security lessons on the finer points of SSH, SSL, and X Windows authentication and encryption.

After several months of intense private development, we are pleased to release Nmap 3.45, including an advanced version detection system. Now instead of using a simple nmap-services table lookup to determine a port's likely purpose, Nmap will (if asked) interrogate that TCP or UDP port to determine what service is really listening. In many cases it can determine the application name and version number as well. Obstacles like SSL encryption and Sun RPC are no threat, as Nmap can connect using OpenSSL (if available) as well as utilizing Nmap's RPC bruteforcer. IPv6 is also supported. You can read our new version detection paper for the details and examples, or just download the latest version and try it out here. Simply add "-sV" to your normal scan command-line options.

News articles covering Nmap version detection: Slashdot, Hacking Linux Exposed, Security Wire Digest.

Nmap featured in The Matrix Reloaded

We have all seen many movies like Hackers which pass off ridiculous 3D animated eye-candy scenes as hacking. So I was shocked to find that Trinity does it properly in The Matrix Reloaded [Under $10 at Amazon]. She whips out Nmap version 2.54BETA25, uses it to find a vulnerable SSH server, and then proceeds to exploit it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001. Shame on them for being vulnerable (timing notes). Congratulations to everyone who has helped make Nmap successful! And thanks to Jason Algol, Titney, Thorsten Delbrouck, and others for sending pics! Click them for higher-res or see more pics here.

Updates:

• News articles about the Nmap cameo: BBC, Slashdot, SecurityFocus, Silicon.Com, Boston Globe, CNET
• JWZ has added this cracking scene as an XScreenSaver 4.10 Easter Egg - run 'xmatrix -small -crack'.
• Dave from Lab6 notifies me that Nmap source code is displayed in Battle Royale: [Screen1] [Screen2] [Trivia]
• Several people have submitted matrix-themed banners to the propaganda gallery. Feel free to use any of these to link to Insecure.org - we appreciate it!
• The UK's Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit and the British Computer Society have put out a joint warning that "Viewers of the new box office blockbuster 'Matrix Reloaded' should not be tempted to emulate the realistic depiction of computer hacking." Kids - don't try this at home!

One of the coolest, yet still relatively obscure features of Nmap is the Idle scan (-sI). Not only does this allow for a completely blind portscan (no packets sent to the target from your real IP), but it can even allow you to bypass packet filters in certain circumstances. Since information on this technique is still rather scarce, I wrote an informal paper describing Idle scanning as well as several other exploits based on predictable IPID sequence numbers. It includes real-life examples as well as a section on defending yourself from these techniques.