Navigating to a terminal can be done as follows: Applications -> System -> ‘ Xterm‘ or ‘ UXterm‘ or ‘ Root Terminal‘. By clicking on the desktop background, a menu will appear. Once logged into XFCE, a terminal window will need to be opened. Once logged in to the Kali Linux machine, using the command ‘ startx‘ the XFCE Desktop Environment can be started – it is worth noting that nmap doesn’t require a desktop environment to run. The first step to working with nmap is to log into the Kali Linux machine and if desired, start a graphical session (This first article in this series installed Kali Linux with the XFCE Desktop Environment).ĭuring the installation, the installer would have prompted the user for a ‘ root‘ user password which will be needed to log in.
#Free network scanner for linux software#
Another computer and permission to scan that computer with nmap – This is often easily done with software such as VirtualBox and the creation of a virtual machine.
Kali Linux (nmap is available in other operating systems and functions similar to this guide).Please use caution when using the nmap tool.
Extreme caution should be taken to ensure that you aren’t using nmap against systems that permission has not be explicitly provided in a written/legal agreement. Many scripts have been developed and included with most nmap installs.Ī word of caution – nmap is commonly used by people with both good and bad intentions.
This scripting engine allows administrators to quickly create a script that can be used to determine if a newly discovered vulnerability exists on their network. Nmap’s functionality can be extended even further with the Nmap Scripting Engine, often abbreviated as NSE. Nmap has the ability to quickly locate live hosts as well as services associated with that host.