Nmap should log any (or open port) results even if host timeout is reached

[carnal0wnage]

Daniel replied with this on twitter: https://svn.nmap.org/nmap/todo/shinnok.txt

would be nice if hosts that come back with open ports, that info was logged (or loggable) even if the host-timeout it reached. just because the scan didnt finish i'd still like to log that it found port X,Y,and Z open.

[harisphnx]

Hello. Has this issue been worked upon?

[YogeshLele]

Hi @carnal0wnage / @dmiller-nmap,

Is this resolved? if not, I would like to work on this enhancement. Could you let me know some more details about this e.g.

1. Steps to reproduce
2. Any edge-cases where nmap should NOT log even if host timeout is reached.

Thanks.
Yogesh

[dmiller-nmap]

Possible patch. Requesting feedback: https://seclists.org/nmap-dev/2020/q1/1

[SM-nzberg]

Is there any update on releasing this feature?

I manually adapted the proposed patch to the current source and tried it. The additional output on STDOUT and Grepable output

"Partial results for 192.0.2.1 due to host timeout:"
"Host: 192.0.2.1 () Status: Timeout"

would already help. But I would prefer a better approach for the XML output.

@dmiller-nmap wrote:

The proposed partial output needs to be distinguished clearly from ordinary output so that it is not interpreted as complete.

If I had to choose between:

• Missing any hosts completely, or
• I may incorrectly interpret some output as complete,

I would definitely prefer the latter.

With the proposed patch, the partial results would be put within a hosthint element. However, existing software (e.g. Metasploit) does not process this element and the results would be lost.

In the meantime, with commit 14c7f87, the attribute timedout was added to the ordinary host element.

I would therefore propose and prefer to put the partial results to the host element. So existing software will not miss these results, while the timedout attribute clearly flags them as partial.

Any feedback on this?

Feature requested in 2015 (or even earlier) ... proposed patch in 2020 - I'd definitely love to see this feature finaly released in 2024 ;)