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Nmap

Network discovery and security auditing tool

The Network Mapper: host discovery, port scanning, service and OS detection, and the Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) for further checks.

Source-availableNPSL-0.95
Visit website View repository Docs
Homepage of Nmap
Official website (nmap.org), captured by ThreatWire.

What Nmap does

Nmap discovers hosts on a network, determines which ports are open, identifies the services and versions behind them and estimates the operating system. The Nmap Scripting Engine extends it with hundreds of Lua scripts for discovery, vulnerability detection and protocol-specific checks.

It ships with Zenmap (a graphical front end), Ncat, Ndiff and Nping. Nmap is free to use, but its licence is the Nmap Public Source License, a custom licence that is not OSI-approved, which is why ThreatWire labels it source-available.

Key features

  • Host discovery and many port-scanning techniques
  • Service, version and OS detection
  • Nmap Scripting Engine with hundreds of scripts
  • Zenmap GUI, Ncat, Ndiff and Nping included
  • XML and grepable output

Licence

Nmap Public Source License 0.95 (NPSL) · Source-available

Custom licence based on the GPL with additional terms on redistribution in commercial products; not approved by the OSI. The repository is a mirror of the official Subversion tree.

Checked by ThreatWire against the repository's licence file on 2026-10-20. GitHub detects: NOASSERTION. Source-available means the code is public but the licence is not approved by the Open Source Initiative.

Security of Nmap itself

No published advisory found for Nmap in GitHub repository advisories. That does not mean the tool has no vulnerabilities.

Sources: GitHub repository advisories · checked 2026-10-20.

Categories and tags

Network scanning and analysisVulnerability scanning#port-scanner#nse#cli#network-discovery#c-plus-plus#lua#security#machine-learning#linux

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