Re: Error readling file containing IP address

[Brandon Enright <bmenrigh () ucsd edu>]

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On Tue, 14 Sep 2010 22:42:41 +0200
Pat Aud <secsys33 () gmail com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I tested under Linux and Windows and discovered something strange in
> nmap 5.35-DC1 using a file containing a list of IP address.
>
> Example of file : ipliste.txt
>
> 192.168.1.1
> 192.168.1.5
>
> Command line : nmap -iL ipliste.txt
>
> Error message :
> Invalid character in host specification.  Note in particular that
> square brackets [] are no longer allowed.  They were redundant and can
> simply be removed.
> QUITTING!
>
> Workaround :
> Under Linux, the ipliste.txt file is UTF-8 encoded with BOM (Byte
> Order Mark). If I remove BOM, I don't have anymore the message. I
> used Geany editor to remove BOM.
>
> Under Windows, if I use an UTF-8 or UCS-2 LE file, I have the same
> message. If I converted the file in ANSI, I don't have anymore the
> problem.
>
> Any idea ? Is it a bug ?
>
> Is it possible to known the limitations regarding address, hostnames
> files.
>
> Thanks for your help,
>
> SecSys33{at}gmai{dot}com


Pat,

I'm hesitant to call this a bug or a feature but rather just a
"limitation" in the implementation.  -iL is handled via a routine called
read_host_from_file() in netutil.cc.  It just does reads bytes in via
getc() which are just bytes.  This means the only acceptable encoding
is ASCII.

If you used a UTF8 file without the BOM, Nmap would still fail if it
hit any Unicode (non-ASCII) characters.  The same goes for
UCS-2/UTF-16.  The '\0' chars would trip the parsing up.

Regards,

Brandon

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