How to use Nmap command line

Nmap (Network Mapper) is the best network scanning tool ever made and it can do much more than just scanning an ip address, nmap has so many parameters that can be use. So i thought i made this separate guide on how to use nmap and explain some parameter it has.

First i'm going to show list of parameters that supported by nmap and what they are for, so you can learn and understand it easily, after that i'm going to show some nmap example command.

Parameter	What for?
-sS	use TCP SYN scan
-sT	use TCP connect scan
-sU	use UDP scan
-sY	use SCTP init scan
-sN	use TCP NULL scan
-sF	use FIN scan
-sX	use Xmas scan
-sA	use TCP ACK scan
-sW	use TCP Window scan
-sM	use TCP Maimon scan
-sZ	use SCTP Cookie echo scan
-sI	use Zombie host scan
-s0	use IP protocol scan
-b	FTP relay host ( FTP bounce scan)
-p	Specify port range, this option specifies which ports you want to scan and overrides the default.
-F	Limit the port to scan, specifies that you wish to scan fewer ports than the default. Normally Nmap scans the most common 1,000 ports for each scanned protocol. With -F, this is reduced to 100.
-r	Don't randomize ports
-sV	Enables version detection
-O	Enables OS detection
-sC	Performs a script scan using the default set of scripts.
-v	verbose mode
-A	This option enables additional advanced and aggressive options
-V	show nmap version

NOTE: I don't show all parameters because it's too many of them, i only show the most important one.

Nmap sample command

basic scan with nmap:

nmap -v [ip address or hostname]

nmap -v 127.0.0.1

nmap -v google.com

scan network and detecting the operating system:

nmap -O -v [ip address or hostname]

nmap -O -v 127.0.0.1

nmap -O -v google.com

The -O parameter means Operating system, it's the capital letter of o (not a zero).

scan multiple ip address/host:

nmap -v 192.168.0.103 192.168.0.105 192.168.0.106

nmap -v lubuntuhowto.com google.com yahoo.com

scan a whole subnet:

nmap -v 192.168.0.*

nmap -v 10.120.201.*

scan multiple ip address using the last octet of ip address:

nmap -v 192.168.0.103,104,105,106

nmap -v 10.120.201.1,2,23,14,35,56

scan range of ip address:

nmap -v 192.168.0.100-125

nmap -v 10.120.201.1-35