Nmap Tutorial || What is Nmap?
Nmap is a valuable reconnaissance tool for gathering information about a target, whether it be an IP or website. It is a must-have for ethical hackers or pen testers.
Nmap can be downloaded on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. If you are running a penetration testing distro like Parrot OS, Linux, or Kali Linux, it can be found in the information gathering section typically labeled as reconnaissance. The real value of using Nmap is not just the ability to scan a server, site or IP address, but how to do so anonymously or quietly without being detected. Please ensure that anything you do with Nmap is legal and for educational purposes only. Nmap can pass a range of IP addresses (such as from this IP address to that IP address) to scan; these IPs could belong to an organization or a network. You can perform a powerful Nmap scan on multiple IP addresses. Here is an example to further illustrate my point: nmap --scan-range 192.168.1.0-255
You can retrieve information about an IP address by using the "whois" command. To find information online, search engines can be incredibly helpful tools. For example, this website provided me with the IP range, location, and geolocation data. If you'd like to save the information to a document, you can do so by using the ">>" symbols followed by the name of the document you'd like to save it to. In this demonstration, I'll use a .txt document and save it to my desktop (where the terminal is open). You can continue to save information in the same manner, and it will be automatically saved for you.