In case you have not heard about it yet, Nmap is quite simply the best network security scanner around. To top it off, it’s free and even open source. While Nmap is designed primarily for use with *NIX systems, there is an excellent Windows version as well, sadly without the graphical interface NmapFE that is available for *NIX users. WiNmap now provides Nmap with a new face for Windows users.
Update: WiNmap, or Windows Nmap is no longer available. The developer homepage is returning a 404 not found error, and the program itself is nowhere to be found on the Internet. Even popular download repositories such as Softpedia do not carry it anymore. When this happens, we always try to find an alternative for you to use. Below you find one alternative:
Windows users can download alternative Nmap frontends for their operating system though. This includes Nmap View, a program that is still working despite not having been updated for the past four years. The program requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 to work, and also a version of Nmap that needs to be integrated into the program settings. You find both download options on the project website.
Once you have configured the program, you can run all kinds of commands directly from the program window.
Among the available options are operating system detection, host discovery, scan techniques, firewall evasion and spoofing and other things that is supported by Nmap.
The program displays tooltips for every feature that it provides. This may be irritating at first as they are usually pretty large and popup immediately after you move the mouse cursor over a setting. They do however help users understand what a specific feature does in the program.
You may also be interested that the developer has made available the source code of the program in the forum. Developers can download the source code from there, for instance to inspect the program before they start using it.
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Please notify me if there’s a link for downloading WinMap.
Don Randall