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Nmap is Ten

Nmap, the popular Open Source security scanner turns ten years old today (1st September)! Ten years ago, i.e. in 1997, Fyodor released first release of Nmap as an article with the Phrack Magazine. It has since come a long way from that humble beginning into one of the foremost network/security tools on the planet, and also was featured in a couple of movies, including "The Matrix: Reloaded".

Current Nmap stable release is 4.20 and it was released some months ago. However the Nmap developers have been very busy. Nmaps development branch includes quite a few hot and wonderful features including the NSE (Nmap Scripting Engine), a new GUI frontend (UMIT), and many more. You can download both the stable and development releases from the Nmap download page. For cutting edge development the Nmap SVN repository is recommended. The improvements made in the development include development contributions from the Google Summer of Code students (5 Nmap students and 7 UMIT students) also. The two major feature additions have already received a nice reception from the relevant communities. UMIT is full of wonderful ideas such as UmitMapper and other things. And NSE has already received attention of SourceFire, the SnortIDS people.

By the way Nmap still remains humble and excellent. Fyodors very pleasant leadership and the vibrant community has always been and will be a major factor in the Nmaps success. I have to say "very well done" to Nmap which is a true Open Source project, and which didn't give into commercialization. So lets wish Nmap Security Scanner a very happy B'day, one of many more to come.

Edit Note: Some details have been removed from the original post. This was done in order to correct the information I had put about a future Nmap release. I'm sorry for any inconveniences I caused by posting that incorrect information.
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