A Little nmap Cheat Sheet

Welcome to my little nmap cheat sheet! 

To learn more about nmap – check out my articles: Getting Started with nmap and Deeper Scanning with nmap and Even Deeper Scanning with nmap and Advanced nmap Scripting Engine.

There was no intent here to recreate the full nmap capabilities, that would have been a waste of your and my time. 

Instead, I tried to create a good cheat sheet reference for common/helpful uses of nmap.  Did I miss one or two that really belong here?  Probably.  Please comment below.

For Reference: Usage format: nmap [Scan Type(s)] [Options] {target specification}

For Reference: nmap help: nmap —help

Simple Basic Scan

nmap 192.168.1.1

Look for all devices on a subnet using ARP

nmap -sn 192.168.1.0/24

Use a PING scan

nmap -sP 192.168.1.1   or    nmap -sP 192.168.1.*   or    nmap -sP 192.168.1.1-254     or    nmap -sP 192.168.1.0/24   

Looking for open ports and OS detection

nmap -sS -P0 -sV -O 192.168.1.1-127

• -sS TCP SYN scan
• -P0 Looking for IP Protocols by protocol number (ICMP=1, TCP=6, UDP=7, etc)
• -sV Probe open ports looking for version information
• -O Enable the OS detection

Don’t wait very long, fast timing

nmap -T5 192.168.1.0/24   

OS and version detection

nmap -A 192.168.1.1   

nmap -A 192.168.1.252

• -A OS detection, version detection, script scanning and traceroute

Aggressive and Faster Scanning

nmap -A -T4 192.168.1.1

• -A agressive (enables -O and -sV and -sC (script) and –traceroute
• -T4 faster timing

Look for the top 20 ports   

nmap –top-ports 20 192.168.1.0/24

Looking for hosts with specific open port

nmap -sT -p3325 192.168.1.1-127 

• -sT TCP Connect scan
• -p3325 Try on port 3325

Ducking for cover – a TCP SYN Scan with decoy source IP

nmap -sS 192.168.1.1-5 -D 192.168.1.98,192.168.1.99   

• -sS TCP SYN scan
• -D  {decoy IP addresses}

To do a verbose scan

To Scan fewer ports (100), and exclude a couple devices, with exclusion

To Scan skipping the ping, and do the rest of the scanning on every port address

Add IPv6 address to Linux system

Now use nmap to scan the IPv6 address

To see interfaces available on the system

Use nmap to do a UDP based ping:

To do a UDP port scan:

You can even spoof the MAC address

nmap Scripting Engine  (NSE)

To see help with scripts

Version information

Vulnerability Scan

Combining scripts

Scripts that execute attacks: