NMAP (Network Mapper), is one of the famous open-source tools to perform network scans, security auditing, and find vulnerabilities in network infrastructure.

One of the popular know usages of NMAP is to find the open ports in the network. NMAP can be installed on Windows, Linux, macOS, and much more.

In this quick guide, I will explain how to get NMAP installed on Windows OS & some usage examples.

Installing NMAP

nmap-download

or, use the direct link here to download 

  • Go to the location where the file is downloaded
  • Right-click on the EXE file and click “Run as administrator.”
run-as-administrator
  • It will start the installation process, accept the license agreement
nmap-agreement
  • You can choose what components to install, but it would be good to install all of them
nmap-components
  • By default, it will install under C:Program Files (x86)Nmap but feel free to change if needed
nmap-installation-location
  • It will start installing NMAP and once done; you will get confirmation
nmap-installed
  • This concludes NMAP is successfully installed.
nmap

Go ahead and play around with the tool to get an idea of how it works. Here are some examples.

Detecting the version

One of the wide uses for NMAP is to fingerprint the OS and running technologies.

nmap -sV $target
nmap-sv

-sV command argument will detect the versions & state of running services

Checking certificate information

OpenSSL is mostly used to perform certificate operations like generation, verification, modification, etc. However, you can do certain things with NMAP as well.

nmap -p $port --script ssl-cert.nse $target
nmap-script

In case you are wondering, ssl-cert.nse the script gets installed along with NMAP. It’s available under the default location C:Program Files x86)Nmapscripts

Checking cipher information

ssl-enum-cihpers.nse script can be used to validate the SSL cipher information.

nmap -p $port --script ssl-enum-ciphers.nse $target
nmap-ssl-cipher-enum

Each cipher suite is shown with a letter grade (A through F) indicating the strength of the connection. The grade is based on the cryptographic strength of the key exchange and of the stream cipher.

The message integrity (hash) algorithm choice is not a factor. The output line beginning with the least strength shows the strength of the weakest cipher offered.

To detect DH (Diffie-Hellman) vulnerability, you can use the below syntax.

nmap -p $port --script ssl-dh-params.nse $target
nmap-dh

I hope this quick instruction helps you to install and get familiar with NMAP on Windows operating system.

If you are looking to master how to use NMAP then check out this online course by Jimmy Larsson.