From 61ef838875a77d6a91acdfdb9e74e797881d4ba3 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: dmiller Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2018 19:29:37 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] Add some explanatory description to fingerprint-strings.nse --- scripts/fingerprint-strings.nse | 11 +++++++++++ 1 file changed, 11 insertions(+) diff --git a/scripts/fingerprint-strings.nse b/scripts/fingerprint-strings.nse index ae37c4a98..a1bd3496d 100644 --- a/scripts/fingerprint-strings.nse +++ b/scripts/fingerprint-strings.nse @@ -6,6 +6,17 @@ local table = require "table" description = [[ Prints the readable strings from service fingerprints of unknown services. + +Nmap's service and application version detection engine sends named probes to +target services and tries to identify them based on the response. When there is +no match, Nmap produces a service fingerprint for submission. Sometimes, +inspecting this fingerprint can give clues as to the identity of the service. +However, the fingerprint is encoded and wrapped to ensure it doesn't lose data, +which can make it hard to read. + +This script simply unwraps the fingerprint and prints the readable ASCII strings +it finds below the name of the probe it responded to. The probe names are taken +from the nmap-service-probes file, not from the response. ]] ---