100 Essential Nmap Commands for Network Scanning

Nmap is a powerful tool for network discovery, security auditing, and troubleshooting that can help developers, sysadmins, and security analysts better understand networks and identify vulnerabilities. This guide covers 100 essential Nmap commands, explaining each one line by line. The commands are categorized into sections, including getting started, basic host discovery, port scanning, advanced scanning techniques, bypassing firewalls and IDS, Nmap scripting engine, optimizing and saving scan results, and scanning the internet and large networks. The guide starts with basic commands such as checking the Nmap version, getting help, and checking the manual. It then moves on to basic host discovery commands, including pinging a host, scanning a single host, scanning multiple hosts, scanning a subnet, and scanning a range of IP addresses. The guide also covers port scanning commands, including scanning for open ports, scanning specific ports, scanning a range of ports, and detecting port status. Advanced scanning techniques include performing a stealth scan, performing a full TCP connect scan, scanning UDP ports, and performing an aggressive scan. The guide also covers bypassing firewalls and IDS using decoy IPs, spoofing MAC addresses, and using spoofed IP addresses. The Nmap scripting engine is also covered, including running vulnerability scans, scanning for open web vulnerabilities, scanning for SMB vulnerabilities, and checking for SSL/TLS issues. Finally, the guide covers optimizing and saving scan results, including increasing scan speed, saving output in a text file, and saving output in XML format.