NmapFE - Learn Thy Network
Submitted by chad on Thu, 02/21/2008 - 01:40.
NmapFE - Introduction
Nmap, a very handy utility for Linux systems, can be run on a network to identify and map out network devices and locations. This utility is particilarly helpful for those who are in network management, or security, because you can not only map devices, but see what ports they have open, and what type of devices they are. You can also see if there are rogue devices on your network, or, you know, find out way too much about the wireless network you randomly connected to. Hah!
If you are running an Ubuntu or Debian system, you can do a
sudo apt-get install nmapfe
Thats it! Now, you should be able to get to it under Applications-->Internet-->NmapFE
The program will prompt you for your password, as it has to run with super privileges. You should see this once you've put in your password.
OOh, you are root! Lets rock this house! Go ahead and put an IP range up top. In my case, I'm going to put in 10.1.1.1-254 which will search all 254 addresses on my subnet. If you are using a 192 subnet, which is most common at home, you would put 192.168.0.1-254 (or whatever your subnet may be, if linksys default it will be 192.168.1.1). Again, this will search all ips on that 254 address subnet. You feel cool don't you?
Go ahead and pick a few of the scans and try them out on your network. Lets take a look at a result I came up with.
Ouch, it looks like I have some wierd Cisco Device that has both SSH, Telnet, and HTTP ports open. I really need to go in and close those telnet and HTTP ports! Thank you Nmap for bringing them to my attention. Notice this also gave me a guess of what type of device it is, and the MAC address of the NIC. Think that could be handy? Ever need to spoof a MAC address?
I will let you to through the different scans and options yourself, but NmapFE works wonderfully right out of the box. One great thing about it is, that you can keep good notes on what the different flags are it is using for the different scans. This will help you learn the command line Nmap.
