Making MyNmap more useful: importing scans
Originally MyNmap wasn’t intended to act as a tool to automate scans. The real goal was to get the grid display with highlighting of what is new. Looking at tons of Nmap scans makes my head spin, and digesting that information to determine what is new is best left to a computer.
Because of this, you don’t necessarily need to use the scheduling interface to get your nmap scans into MyNmap, furthermore if you have two scans and want to compare differences between the two–you can load them in succession and be able to analyze the differences.
It is quite easy, when you run your scans use the “nmap -oX” flag. Then copy the XML file into the “/usr/local/mynmap/scans” directory with the file extension “new.xml“. If you don’t have the “new.xml” at the end of the filename MyNmap will ignore the file (this is to stop it from trying to process files that haven’t been completely written while a scan is in process, sure I could have used another directory for that, but I didn’t.)
I use this at work so that I can visualize scan data from external networks, using cron, a shell script, and SSH allows me to use an external machine to keep an ongoing view of what is in our public accessible network space.
I also use a script that allows me to alert on when new things appear in the DMZ based upon scan results–I will post how that works here soon.
MyNmap on ESX?
I have received a few requests for an ESX version of the MyNmap virtual appliance. It turns out that getting it running on ESX is actually pretty simple. Instead of being redundant, there are great instructions over at Tony Vegue’s website. Thanks Tony!
Requesting Suggestions for MyNmap Enhancements
I am brainstorming on where the project should go. There are a few bugs that need fixing, the most glaring of these is a race condition where a scan doesn’t complete and the file is perpetually trying to be parsed by the back end loader. I have been toying with the idea of rewriting the PERL code so that the application is entirely written in PHP, I just feel the whole architecture of mixing programming languages is a little ugly. The scheduling interface, while functional, is very clunky. And finally there have been a lot of improvements in Nmap that the tool doesn’t take advantage of, like LUA scripts.
I am open for suggestions and feature requests right now, please comment if you have an idea!
Announcing MyNmap Virtual Machine
The installation of MyNmap–especially with sparse installation documentation–can be confusing if the user doesn’t have experience with similar LAMP applications. To offer another way for people I have added a (81 MB zipped) Vmware image for download.
This is an OpenBSD 4.3 based Vmware virtual machine with a fully functional installation of MyNmap.
It is configured to use DHCP, and has a web-server running on port 80. The OS install is minimal, and does not include a GUI. See README.txt file for more details (including passwords.)
You can download the free Vmware player at vmware.com.
Enjoy :)
Announcing MyNmap
I have posted the code for a project I started back in 2003.
MyNmap Screenshot
I needed the ability to manage port scan data from thousands of systems and the ability to sort through it quickly. The result was a mish-mash of LAMP + a PERL script that takes Nmap’s XML and inserts it into a database, allowing some basic reporting. The installation instructions are a little sparse right now, but I hope to straighten that out soon. Check the README file in the tarball for instructions–I wouldn’t suggest trying it if you aren’t familiar with LAMP applications.
I have found the program to be immensely useful, and I hope you do too!
You can download the source here.