Re: implementing nmap in python

["Joshua D. Abraham" <jabra () ccs neu edu>]

On 28.Aug.2007 12:01PM -0400, Max wrote:

> On 8/28/07, Guilherme Polo <ggpolo () gmail com> wrote:
> > It is not that we (can I say we?) from Umit don't love Nmap::Scanner,
> > but, first: it is perl =) Umit is python. Second, I took a look at
> > your lib right now and I saw it uses IPC::Open3, that is just like
> > using subprocess or you can update me since I haven't been using perl
> > lately. Umit already handles the nmap scans using subprocess, and it
> > also has a nmap xml parser and during this GSoC a new database schema
> > was created and it is possible to insert these xml scans into
> > database, but it is still missing somethings that I saw your lib have.
>
> > Of course I'm not telling you to not port your library to python and
> > ruby (argh ;)
> > Just pointing some reasons why it would be good to have a libnmap like
> > was suggested by Giorgio and why it is not used in Umit.
>
> Ah, ok, makes sense.  This is interesting (libnmap), about 4-5 years
> ago I expressed a wish to have a libnmap, before I started on
> Nmap::Scanner .. I didn't have the time to explore the idea with code
> and solicited for help, but no one was interested at that point si I
> wrote my sub-process based library.
>
> Fyodor at that time also stated that he preferred to have
> post-processing tools use nmap output in order to not tie nmap down to
> the complexity of exposing its' functionality in library form.

To me, it just makes sense to have a tool that processes the XML
which is not directly tied to Nmap. This is what I have done
with my project PBNJ. It stores the results of  Nmap scan(s) in a database
and provide a method for users to build SQL queries based on the results.
I have setup automated alerting using cron. It uses
Nmap::Parser to do this, by either kicking off a Nmap scan and
parsing that or just parsing an XML file. The schema is rather simply
so people could develop queries easier. I'm plan on improving
the schema for the next release.

Regards,
Josh

-- 
Joshua D. Abraham
Northeastern University
College of Computer and Information Science
www.ccs.neu.edu/home/jabra

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