Nmap: Network Exploration and Security Auditing Cookbook - Second Edition

Monitoring servers remotely with Nmap and Ndiff

Using tools from the Nmap project we can set up a simple but powerful monitoring system. Because our monitoring system will depend on Nmap, we can monitor any information Nmap can gather. To detect changes on the network, we will need to compare the results of two scans: the base or known good state and the last results obtained. Now it is the perfect time to introduce Ndiff.

Ndiff was designed to address the issues of using the traditional diff command with two XML scan results. It compares files by removing false positives and producing a more readable output, which is perfect for anyone who needs to keep track of the scan results.

This recipe describes how to use bash scripting, cron, Nmap, ...