Service identification with Nmap

Although banner grabbing can be an extremely lucrative source of information at times, version disclosure in service banners is becoming less common. Nmap has a service-identification function that goes far beyond simple banner-grabbing techniques. This recipe will demonstrate how to use Nmap to perform service identification based on probe-response analysis.

Getting ready

To use Nmap to perform service identification, you will need to have a remote system that is running network services that can be probed and inspected. In the examples provided, an instance of Metasploitable2 is used to perform this task. For more information on setting up Metasploitable2, refer to the Installing Metasploitable2 recipe in Chapter 1, Getting Started...