Nmap Development mailing list archives
New Nmap OS classification scheme
From: Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>
Date: Fri, 20 Jun 2003 19:28:38 -0700
Hi Guys. Back in February, Chad Loder ( http://www.rapid7.com ) convinced me that the OS database needed a better classification scheme. The textual descriptions just don't always scale to huge networks as they are hard to parse automatically. Even worse, many of the fingerprints don't even describe what a device is. Results like "Nexland ISB Pro800 Turbo" and "Siemens 300E Release 6.5" are much more useful when you add the words "cable modem" and "business phone system". So I spent the last few days normalizing and updating the DB entries. I also added a classification scheme, which offers the vendor name (e.g. Sun), underlying OS (e.g. Solaris), OS generation (e.g. 7), and device type (general purpose, router, switch, game console, etc). This can be useful if you want to (say) locate and eliminate the SCO systems on a network, or find the wireless access points (WAPs) by scanning from the wired side. The next version of Nmap will print these classifications, although I haven't decided on all the details yet. It would be useful to have more eyes examining my classification to identify any errors. Everyone is familiar with a different set of devices after all. If you have time to look it over, check out the new 'Class' lines in: http://www.insecure.org/nmap/data/nmap-os-fingerprints What would be most useful are: o Misclassifications - like if I say 'router' but it is really a switch or printer. o Underlying OS identification - I just put 'embedded-misc' when I didn't know the OS. Feel feel free to send the actual OS name running under the covers. I only included the "OS Generation' for popular operating systems like Linux and IOS since I don't want to invest a huge amount of time cataloging every revision of the embedded OS in some printer. But the name doesn't hurt. o Any Mispelings o Note that for systems without a canonical vendor (e.g. Linux) I just use the OS name. Nmap will omit the vendor name when it sees that. o Feel free to send suggestions about changing the categories. This is far from set in stone. Here are the 26 device type categories that are currently recognized:
egrep '^Class' nmap-os-fingerprints | cut -d\| -f4 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn
448 general purpose
94 router
60 broadband router
49 printer
46 switch
39 firewall
34 terminal server
19 print server
17 WAP
16 specialized
16 load balancer
12 web proxy
10 fileserver
8 telecom-misc
7 X terminal
7 hub
6 webcam
6 bridge
5 storage-misc
5 power-device
4 VoIP phone
4 game console
3 encryption accelerator
3 CSUDSU
2 PBX
2 BBS
And here are the top 20 (of 206) vendors:
egrep '^Class' nmap-os-fingerprints | cut -d\| -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | sed 's/Class //' | head -20
72 Cisco
61 Microsoft
57 IBM
45 Linux
40 DEC
36 Apple
35 HP
30 FreeBSD
21 Sun
19 Novell
18 OpenBSD
18 3Com
14 NetBSD
13 D-Link
12 SGI
12 Ascend
11 SCO
11 Compaq
11 AXIS
8 Siemens
And the top 20 (of 96) OS families:
egrep '^Class' nmap-os-fingerprints | cut -d\| -f2 | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head -20
358 embedded-misc
60 Windows
54 Linux
35 IOS
30 FreeBSD
26 AIX
21 OpenVMS
21 Mac OS
19 Netware
18 Solaris
18 OpenBSD
14 NetBSD
14 HP-UX
12 IRIX
11 PIX
9 OS/400
8 Mac OS X
8 BSD-misc
8 AmigaOS
7 Tru64 UNIX
Thanks,
Fyodor
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