Nmap Cheat Sheet

May 1, 2020 by Nathan House

Target Specification

Switch	Example	Description
	nmap 192.168.1.1	Scan a single IP
	nmap 192.168.1.1 192.168.2.1	Scan specific IPs
	nmap 192.168.1.1-254	Scan a range
	nmap scanme.nmap.org	Scan a domain
	nmap 192.168.1.0/24	Scan using CIDR notation
-iL	nmap -iL targets.txt	Scan targets from a file
-iR	nmap -iR 100	Scan 100 random hosts
--exclude	nmap --exclude 192.168.1.1	Exclude listed hosts

Scan Techniques

Switch	Example	Description
-sS	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sS	TCP SYN port scan (Default)
-sT	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sT	TCP connect port scan (Default without root privilege)
-sU	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sU	UDP port scan
-sA	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sA	TCP ACK port scan
-sW	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sW	TCP Window port scan
-sM	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sM	TCP Maimon port scan

Host Discovery

Switch	Example	Description
-sL	nmap 192.168.1.1-3 -sL	No Scan. List targets only
-sn	nmap 192.168.1.1/24 -sn	Disable port scanning. Host discovery only.
-Pn	nmap 192.168.1.1-5 -Pn	Disable host discovery. Port scan only.
-PS	nmap 192.168.1.1-5 -PS22-25,80	TCP SYN discovery on port x. Port 80 by default
-PA	nmap 192.168.1.1-5 -PA22-25,80	TCP ACK discovery on port x. Port 80 by default
-PU	nmap 192.168.1.1-5 -PU53	UDP discovery on port x. Port 40125 by default
-PR	nmap 192.168.1.1-1/24 -PR	ARP discovery on local network
-n	nmap 192.168.1.1 -n	Never do DNS resolution

Port Specification

Switch	Example	Description
-p	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p 21	Port scan for port x
-p	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p 21-100	Port range
-p	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p U:53,T:21-25,80	Port scan multiple TCP and UDP ports
-p-	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p-	Port scan all ports
-p	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p http,https	Port scan from service name
-F	nmap 192.168.1.1 -F	Fast port scan (100 ports)
--top-ports	nmap 192.168.1.1 --top-ports 2000	Port scan the top x ports
-p-65535	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p-65535	Leaving off initial port in range makes the scan start at port 1
-p0-	nmap 192.168.1.1 -p0-	Leaving off end port in range makes the scan go through to port 65535

Service and Version Detection

Switch	Example	Description
-sV	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sV	Attempts to determine the version of the service running on port
-sV --version-intensity	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sV --version-intensity 8	Intensity level 0 to 9. Higher number increases possibility of correctness
-sV --version-light	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sV --version-light	Enable light mode. Lower possibility of correctness. Faster
-sV --version-all	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sV --version-all	Enable intensity level 9. Higher possibility of correctness. Slower
-A	nmap 192.168.1.1 -A	Enables OS detection, version detection, script scanning, and traceroute

OS Detection

Switch	Example	Description
-O	nmap 192.168.1.1 -O	Remote OS detection using TCP/IP stack fingerprinting
-O --osscan-limit	nmap 192.168.1.1 -O --osscan-limit	If at least one open and one closed TCP port are not found it will not try OS detection against host
-O --osscan-guess	nmap 192.168.1.1 -O --osscan-guess	Makes Nmap guess more aggressively
-O --max-os-tries	nmap 192.168.1.1 -O --max-os-tries 1	Set the maximum number x of OS detection tries against a target
-A	nmap 192.168.1.1 -A	Enables OS detection, version detection, script scanning, and traceroute

Timing and Performance

Switch	Example	Description
-T0	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T0	Paranoid (0) Intrusion Detection System evasion
-T1	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T1	Sneaky (1) Intrusion Detection System evasion
-T2	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T2	Polite (2) slows down the scan to use less bandwidth and use less target machine resources
-T3	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T3	Normal (3) which is default speed
-T4	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T4	Aggressive (4) speeds scans; assumes you are on a reasonably fast and reliable network
-T5	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T5	Insane (5) speeds scan; assumes you are on an extraordinarily fast network

Switch	Example input	Description
--host-timeout <time>	1s; 4m; 2h	Give up on target after this long
--min-rtt-timeout/max-rtt-timeout/initial-rtt-timeout <time>	1s; 4m; 2h	Specifies probe round trip time
--min-hostgroup/max-hostgroup <size<size>	50; 1024	Parallel host scan group sizes
--min-parallelism/max-parallelism <numprobes>	10; 1	Probe parallelization
--scan-delay/--max-scan-delay <time>	20ms; 2s; 4m; 5h	Adjust delay between probes
--max-retries <tries>	3	Specify the maximum number of port scan probe retransmissions
--min-rate <number>	100	Send packets no slower than <numberr> per second
--max-rate <number>	100	Send packets no faster than <number> per second

NSE Scripts

Switch	Example	Description
-sC	nmap 192.168.1.1 -sC	Scan with default NSE scripts. Considered useful for discovery and safe
--script default	nmap 192.168.1.1 --script default	Scan with default NSE scripts. Considered useful for discovery and safe
--script	nmap 192.168.1.1 --script=banner	Scan with a single script. Example banner
--script	nmap 192.168.1.1 --script=http*	Scan with a wildcard. Example http
--script	nmap 192.168.1.1 --script=http,banner	Scan with two scripts. Example http and banner
--script	nmap 192.168.1.1 --script "not intrusive"	Scan default, but remove intrusive scripts
--script-args	nmap --script snmp-sysdescr --script-args snmpcommunity=admin 192.168.1.1	NSE script with arguments

Useful NSE Script Examples

Command	Description
nmap -Pn --script=http-sitemap-generator scanme.nmap.org	http site map generator
nmap -n -Pn -p 80 --open -sV -vvv --script banner,http-title -iR 1000	Fast search for random web servers
nmap -Pn --script=dns-brute domain.com	Brute forces DNS hostnames guessing subdomains
nmap -n -Pn -vv -O -sV --script smb-enum,smb-ls,smb-mbenum,smb-os-discovery,smb-s,smb-vuln,smbv2 -vv 192.168.1.1	Safe SMB scripts to run
nmap --script whois* domain.com	Whois query
nmap -p80 --script http-unsafe-output-escaping scanme.nmap.org	Detect cross site scripting vulnerabilities
nmap -p80 --script http-sql-injection scanme.nmap.org	Check for SQL injections

Firewall / IDS Evasion and Spoofing

Switch	Example	Description
-f	nmap 192.168.1.1 -f	Requested scan (including ping scans) use tiny fragmented IP packets. Harder for packet filters
--mtu	nmap 192.168.1.1 --mtu 32	Set your own offset size
-D	nmap -D 192.168.1.101,192.168.1.102, 192.168.1.103,192.168.1.23 192.168.1.1	Send scans from spoofed IPs
-D	nmap -D decoy-ip1,decoy-ip2,your-own-ip,decoy-ip3,decoy-ip4 remote-host-ip	Above example explained
-S	nmap -S www.microsoft.com www.facebook.com	Scan Facebook from Microsoft (-e eth0 -Pn may be required)
-g	nmap -g 53 192.168.1.1	Use given source port number
--proxies	nmap --proxies http://192.168.1.1:8080, http://192.168.1.2:8080 192.168.1.1	Relay connections through HTTP/SOCKS4 proxies
--data-length	nmap --data-length 200 192.168.1.1	Appends random data to sent packets

Example IDS Evasion command

nmap -f -t 0 -n -Pn –data-length 200 -D 192.168.1.101,192.168.1.102,192.168.1.103,192.168.1.23 192.168.1.1

Output

Switch	Example	Description
-oN	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oN normal.file	Normal output to the file normal.file
-oX	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oX xml.file	XML output to the file xml.file
-oG	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oG grep.file	Grepable output to the file grep.file
-oA	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oA results	Output in the three major formats at once
-oG -	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oG -	Grepable output to screen. -oN -, -oX - also usable
--append-output	nmap 192.168.1.1 -oN file.file --append-output	Append a scan to a previous scan file
-v	nmap 192.168.1.1 -v	Increase the verbosity level (use -vv or more for greater effect)
-d	nmap 192.168.1.1 -d	Increase debugging level (use -dd or more for greater effect)
--reason	nmap 192.168.1.1 --reason	Display the reason a port is in a particular state, same output as -vv
--open	nmap 192.168.1.1 --open	Only show open (or possibly open) ports
--packet-trace	nmap 192.168.1.1 -T4 --packet-trace	Show all packets sent and received
--iflist	nmap --iflist	Shows the host interfaces and routes
--resume	nmap --resume results.file	Resume a scan

Helpful Nmap Output examples

Command	Description
nmap -p80 -sV -oG - --open 192.168.1.1/24 \| grep open	Scan for web servers and grep to show which IPs are running web servers
nmap -iR 10 -n -oX out.xml \| grep "Nmap" \| cut -d " " -f5 > live-hosts.txt	Generate a list of the IPs of live hosts
nmap -iR 10 -n -oX out2.xml \| grep "Nmap" \| cut -d " " -f5 >> live-hosts.txt	Append IP to the list of live hosts
ndiff scanl.xml scan2.xml	Compare output from nmap using the ndif
xsltproc nmap.xml -o nmap.html	Convert nmap xml files to html files
grep " open " results.nmap \| sed -r 's/ +/ /g' \| sort \| uniq -c \| sort -rn \| less	Reverse sorted list of how often ports turn up

Miscellaneous Options

Switch	Example	Description
-6	nmap -6 2607:f0d0:1002:51::4	Enable IPv6 scanning
-h	nmap -h	nmap help screen

Other Useful Nmap Commands

Command	Description
nmap -iR 10 -PS22-25,80,113,1050,35000 -v -sn	Discovery only on ports x, no port scan
nmap 192.168.1.1-1/24 -PR -sn -vv	Arp discovery only on local network, no port scan
nmap -iR 10 -sn -traceroute	Traceroute to random targets, no port scan
nmap 192.168.1.1-50 -sL --dns-server 192.168.1.1	Query the Internal DNS for hosts, list targets only

About Nathan House

Nathan House is the founder and CEO of Station X a cyber security training and consultancy company. He has over 25 years experience in cyber security where he has advised some of largest companies in the world, assuring security on multi-million and multi-billion pound projects.

Nathan is the author of the popular "The Complete Cyber Security Course" which has been taken by over half a million students in 195 countries.

Winner of the AI "Cyber Security Educator of the Year 2020" award.
Over the years he has spoken at a number of security conferences, developed free security tools, and discovered serious security vulnerabilities in leading applications.

PGP Fingerprint : CBA3FBF729FB00CB21D64FB00E7955AE6E37FEF1

Thanks a lot for the information. it is very useful.

That will be a helpful tipsheet. Thank you so much. I can learn more about it. looking forward to the hacking course from you.

Looking forward to it. I use nmap most days but only use a limited number of switches.

Keep the good hands-on stuff coming

Thank you very much in deed, very useful, I will buy your course on nmap, I want to insist about a Firewall course there aren’t around, I guess it is a good investment for you, I bought already all your courses and they are the best! Please keep going!

Great news.
In expectation of this course.
As usual ,
Thanks for what you doing.

I think this is very Useful,Thank you soo much.Am enjoying the training and practice.

Love it. Thank you Nathan!

Muchas gracias ,,, me fue de utilidad,,,

How to test .net Web services using ZenMap

Nathan House says:

December 11, 2017 at 11:10 am

You will need to expand on this question as I’m not clear what you are asking?

Reply

Thank you for sharing this information!

Thank you for this cheatsheet.
I think there is a mistake concerning the -sS switch. It is not the default one.
Normally, -sT is the default one and -sS needs root privileges.

Nathan House says:

January 10, 2018 at 3:26 pm

Default with root. I assume you are running as root!

Reply

This is very helpful. Thanks a lot!

Sir this is very helpfull and very important for firewall point of view,
But what about port knock if a system or server is using port knock to active its any port for a client. Any method by nmap that can bypass port knock.

Thank you

Nathan House says:

July 23, 2018 at 1:58 pm

The basic port knocking method uses a fixed sequence of ports. This method is not protected cryptographically so there are the following attacks possible:

brute-force — If you use the full range of possible ports 1—65535 then even very short knocking sequences give impressive number of combinations to test. For example for 3 knocks with randomly generated sequence it is 65535³ ≈ 2.8×10¹⁴. Another aspect to consider is that the port which will open after the knocking could be unknown so the attacker would have to repeatedly scan the ports during the port knocking attempts. — The number of combinations to try can be lowered if some information about the ports being used is known (for example a subset of ports) or if there is a successful random number generator attack.
Measure against such attacks except securing the mentioned possible vulnerabilities could be disabling of the access from the attacker source IP address after certain number of unsuccessful attempts during certain time period. Unfortunately this makes the system vulnerable to DoS attacks by attacker locking your access by using your IP address as a spoofed source address.
sniffing — The port knocking sequence is not protected cryptographically so an attacker can sniff the successful port knocking sequence. The port knocking sequence could also leak from logs of the destination system itself of from a network monitoring system.
Measure against this attack is use of one-time knocking sequences (analogy of one-time passwords). The one-time sequence could be a hash computed from a secret and some of the following: source IP address, time, event counter etc.
man in the middle — Captured one-time knocking sequences cannot be reused but a port-knocking access can be exploited by a man-in-the-middle attack. The attacker in the path of your communication (possibly redirected) can relay your successful communication, see and modify anything.
The port-knocking itself is performed by one-way communication as such it cannot be protected against MITM. Also the communication following the port knocking must be secured against MITM to retain the security. To ensure this we can use standard encrypted protocols like SSL or SSH.

Reply

Great stuff!

Can you please help me understand the main difference between
nmap 192.168.1.1 -O and nmap 192.168.1.1 -A

Nathan House says:

August 4, 2018 at 3:00 pm

nmap 192.168.1.1 -O = Remote OS detection using TCP/IP stack fingerprinting

nmap 192.168.1.1 -A = Enables OS detection PLUS – version detection, script scanning, and traceroute

So -O is only OS detection, -A is OS detection PLUS – version detection, script scanning, and traceroute

Reply

Thanks Man , That’s Help me a lot .
i wanna ask , what is the main different between -sn AND -Pn ;
what is the network discovery do exactly and port scan !!

Nathan House says:

September 1, 2018 at 6:55 pm

-sn just finds hosts that are up. No port scan. -Pn is the opposite. No host discovery. Port scan if it appears up or not.

Reply
Aetos says:

September 24, 2021 at 12:39 pm

Pn is for no ping
command which dosen’t TCP handshake

Reply

hi sir ,
i just wanna know , is there any benefit for this -sL option ? and when do i use -P0 ?

Nathan House says:

September 2, 2018 at 6:04 pm

-sL does no scan and just lists targets only to be scanned.
The list scan is a degenerate form of host discovery that simply lists each host of the network(s) specified, without sending any packets to the target hosts. By default, Nmap still does reverse-DNS resolution on the hosts to learn their names. It is often surprising how much useful information simple hostnames give out. For example, fw.chi is the name of one company’s Chicago firewall. Nmap also reports the total number of IP addresses at the end. The list scan is a good sanity check to ensure that you have proper IP addresses for your targets. If the hosts sport domain names you do not recognize, it is worth investigating further to prevent scanning the wrong company’s network. Since the idea is to simply print a list of target hosts, options for higher level functionality such as port scanning, OS detection, or ping scanning cannot be combined with this. If you wish to disable ping scanning while still performing such higher level functionality, read up on the -Pn (skip ping) option.

-PO (IP Protocol Ping)
One of the newer host discovery options is the IP protocol ping, which sends IP packets with the specified protocol number set in their IP header. The protocol list takes the same format as do port lists in the previously discussed TCP, UDP and SCTP host discovery options. If no protocols are specified, the default is to send multiple IP packets for ICMP (protocol 1), IGMP (protocol 2), and IP-in-IP (protocol 4). The default protocols can be configured at compile-time by changingDEFAULT_PROTO_PROBE_PORT_SPEC in nmap.h. Note that for the ICMP, IGMP, TCP (protocol 6), UDP (protocol 17) and SCTP (protocol 132), the packets are sent with the proper protocol headers while other protocols are sent with no additional data beyond the IP header (unless any of –data, –data-string, or –data-length options are specified). This host discovery method looks for either responses using the same protocol as a probe, or ICMP protocol unreachable messages which signify that the given protocol isn’t supported on the destination host. Either type of response signifies that the target host is alive.

Reply
- tad says:
  
  September 3, 2018 at 1:27 am
  
  Yea i read this , but i dont get it , in short words give me what is -P0 used for ??
  
  Reply
  - Nathan House says:
    
    September 3, 2018 at 9:08 am
    
    Do you know what IP protocols are? like 1 ICMP Internet Control Message Protocol RFC 792, 2 IGMP Internet Group Management Protocol RFC 1112.
    
    It sends IP packets with the specified protocol number set in the IP header. It’s an alternative discovery method.
    
    Reply
    - UJJWAL says:
      
      July 2, 2019 at 5:45 pm
      
      I AM YOUR BIG FAN SIR..LOVE U
    - Leslie says:
      
      September 10, 2021 at 7:49 pm
      
      What would you recommend I study to understand IP Protocols, Packets etc.

Great! I was just wondering “gosh, if there could be a pdf version and – woah, there is”

Nathan House says:

October 20, 2018 at 4:22 pm

Gald to help!

Reply

sirr i need your help
i thing u help mee

Nathan House says:

October 25, 2018 at 9:38 am

How can I help?

Reply

Very good article

Thank you Nathan.

Very great article I tried to build, an online command simulator

This is so awesome! I’m taking your course now and my only regret is I didn’t do this sooner! This could’ve saved me soooo much headache and time! But it’s ok! Best way to learn is through error lol. Now that I know all the things NOT to do, you are showing the way. Thank you Mr. House.

Nathan House says:

July 20, 2019 at 10:59 am

Glad you are enjoying the course! 🙂

Reply

Great article and quite good presentation
I built and online version of nmap here so such commands
like described here i like them.

man u may live long , may God bless u ok

Appreciate it Arthur.

When was the last time you updated your course Nathan?

Nathan House says:

February 11, 2020 at 8:15 am

nmap doesn’t change quickly in terms of how you use the tool. The last major release Nmap 7.00 was November 9, 2015. We are still on 7 now. The course was created well after this.

Reply

Sir, plez show bobs en vagene.. thank kindly sir I owe you, you r best god bless sir

Nathan House says:

June 13, 2020 at 6:15 am

I assume you mean “Bobs and Vegana”. Any reason I should do that?

Reply

Wow – this is awesome. I was in the throes of creating my own, and well, yours looks much better than mine. Much appreciated!

Nathan House says:

June 13, 2020 at 6:12 am

Thank you Tim

Reply

thank you sir nathan!

Thank you very much Sir, for this NMAP Cheat sheet, I am from India, and enrolled in your the Complete Cyber Security Volume 1,2,3,4, loved your content and way of explaining #StaySafeOnline

Nathan House says:

August 12, 2020 at 9:34 am

My pleasure. Great to have you on the course.

Reply

What does nmap do other than scan for vunerailitites?

Nathan House says:

August 24, 2020 at 9:44 am

It’s not really a vulnerability scanner, although it can do that with a script. It is for discovering hosts and open ports.

Reply

thank you for the detailed nmap cheat sheet.

N.e.e.d.s

Awesome stuff, I am getting ready to graduate from MHCC with a Cybersecurity/Networking degree, realizing I still have a lot to learn.

Hi! I am trying to find on my network IP addresses that have MySQL open using Nmap. Is any help available? Thanks in advance

Nathan House says:

November 13, 2020 at 2:14 pm

Scan from outside your network and look for the MySQL ports. Port 3306 is the default port for the classic MySQL protocol ( port ), which is used by the mysql client, MySQL Connectors, and utilities such as mysqldump and mysqlpump.

Reply

Hi Nathan, maybe add movie name Sneakers and replace David with Marty. Like Marty’s friend said “too many secrets”. Cheers
Six

So it means we don’t need to get the course of Nmap on Udemy from you, all of it is here ?

Nathan House says:

November 25, 2020 at 11:32 am

The the cyber security training touy need including nmap training is in VIP membership
https://www.stationx.net/vip-membership

Reply

BEST sir….
Love from INDIA

Nathan House says:

December 8, 2020 at 2:05 pm

Thank you.

Reply

Hey Nathan,

I appreciate the cheat sheet with really good explanations of each Nmap parameter. So I’ve included this article as a reference in my CSS Pen testing report, Thanks again!

nice

nice blog bro

Thank you so much!!!

Yes! It’s true.. YOU are THE NMAP KING!
I’ve learned things here that my mother wouldn’t even teach me. Thanks so much.
Cheers!
USA (Now a Trump free zone! 🙂

I think the nmap full course and scanning techniques there are the best available. Never mind the midland accent its great but the explanations are best best.

Systematics and cogent.