Read on Twitter
You might have noticed *way fewer* new NSE scripts in this release (only 3!). We've been focused on infrastructure and improvements to Nmap core features instead, and the results are really exciting! 1/ https://twitter.com/nmap/status/1312500762434441216
First and foremost, of course, is Npcap 1.00. Windows users now have a really fast and very stable backend for all of Nmap's raw packet scanning features like TCP SYN, UDP, OS detection, and traceroute. 2/ https://twitter.com/nmap/status/1310699342290796544
Speaking of UDP, nmap -sU just got a lot faster and more accurate thanks to the folks at @Rapid7, who contributed 23 new UDP payloads, more default ports for existing payloads, and a fallback mechanism to try different payloads if the first doesn't work. 3/
We fixed a 13-year-old regression in ARP host discovery that was making Nmap miss some systems, usually printers and mobile devices at the upper end of the local subnet. Even better? The new algorithm is even faster. 4/ https://github.com/nmap/nmap/issues/92
Back in 2016, @TudorEmil created the IOCP engine for Nsock, a huge speed and CPU-load boost over the previous "poll" engine, but it never made it to prime-time. We fixed some issues with handling PCAP sockets, and now it is making blazing fast NSE scans by default on Windows. 5/
We fixed 3 bugs of note: an assertion failure when scanning the local LAN, a crash in zlib on Windows when scanning some misbehaving web servers, and a hang when parsing TCP Options in a really weird case that is probably another #KilledByNmap device. 6/
There's a new element in the XML output: <hosthint> shows partial scan results, like the status of addresses found "up" during host discovery. We're excited to explore other possibilities for this element in the future, like partial results for timed-out targets. 7/
We undertook a big code cleanup based on @LGTM code analysis, improving from a "C" to an "A+", though new signatures have brought us back down to "A". The struggle continues... 8/ https://github.com/nmap/nmap/issues/1834
Of course, NSE didn't go completely untouched. The always-excellent nnposter has been squashing bugs like a boss, taking on your patches, and generally making NSE and especially the http-* scripts better than ever. 9/
Honorable mention:
* Reverse-DNS handles upper-case records
* Resume IPv6 scans
* OS detection takes 50% less CPU
* Goes to eleven
Full release notes: https://seclists.org/nmap-announce/2020/1
Go get it! https://nmap.org/download.html
* Reverse-DNS handles upper-case records
* Resume IPv6 scans
* OS detection takes 50% less CPU
* Goes to eleven
Full release notes: https://seclists.org/nmap-announce/2020/1
Go get it! https://nmap.org/download.html
