Masscan is useful for red teamers doing offensive research (like penetration testing) as well as blue teamers and IT managers doing defensive research (like finding attack vectors within their network).

Masscan only supports IP addresses and simple ranges (while Nmap supports DNS names too).

There are no default ports to scan with Masscan.

This enables users to translate their Nmap knowledge quickly.Īlthough there is a lot of Nmap compatibility, there are a couple of differences worth mentioning that separate Masscan from Nmap:

Nmap Compatibility: Masscan was developed with the goal of making the tool's usage and output as similar to Nmap's as possible.

Banner checking: Apart from merely performing port scans, the tool can also complete TCP connections to fetch basic banner information.

Portability: The software can be compiled and run on all three major operating systems: Windows, MacOS and Linux.

Scalable: Probably the most important feature of Masscan is its ability to transmit up to 10 million packets per second through its asynchronous architecture.And Masscan can be used for both defensive and offensive investigations. They can offer us the quickest way to detect running apps and services on remote open ports. Port scanners are among the most important tools in a researcher's toolset. The goal of Masscan, however, is to enable security researchers to run port scans on large swathes of the Internet as quickly as possible.Īccording to its author Robert Graham, it only takes '6 minutes at around 10 million packets per second' to fully scan the entire Internet. Masscan is a network port scanner, similar in many ways to the well-known Nmap command.

Scanning the entire Internet with Masscan.

Advanced port scan against multiple ports.

Today we'll review the open source tool Masscan, one of the most popular port scanners around. GOSINT: A framework for collecting, processing and exporting Indicators of Compromise (IoC). Previously, we reviewed two very useful tools for infosec researchers: Jok3r: An automated network and web penetration testing tool, and

Some tools are designed to automate repetitive tasks and other tools are designed to do things that wouldn't be practical to do manually. Researchers require tools to make their investigations not only more effective, but also less mundane.

Advanced port scanner portable