Scanners
Each of the tools we’ve covered in this chapter thus far has a unique specialty. In this section, we are going to cover a group of tools that each have a unique specialty but within the same overall concept of scanning. Scanning is part of the reconnaissance phase of a cyberattack. It’s where the attacker gets useful information to narrow their attack vector and better plan their strategy. Different scanners have different areas of emphasis. We are going to begin with the extremely popular, lightweight, and time-tested Nmap network scanner.
Nmap
If you were to go around asking professional penetration testers to list their top five favorite tools, you’d be hard-pressed to find a single one who doesn’t list Nmap among them. Nmap is a very powerful network exploration tool and is regularly used for security auditing. It is designed to discover network nodes – hosts – along with some network-related services within a computer network...
