Nmap usage stats

[Fyodor <fyodor () insecure org>]

Someday soon I hope to repeat the Nmap survey from a couple years ago
that resulted in a wildly popular "top 50 security tools" list as well
as useful data on Nmap users' desired features and platforms.  But
instead, I spent much of today going through thousands (literally!) of
OS fingerprint submissions to update the DB.  Submissions using
reasonably recent versions of Nmap include the scanning host platform
and Nmap versions.  I ran the numbers and found some interesting
stats.  Linux is by far the most popular platform.  Then Windows puts
on a surprisingly strong 2nd place!  Note that this is a measure of
"cool, important users" (those who submit fingerprints) and may not be
representative of the userbase as a whole.  Anyway, here is the table:

2579 Linux (most popular distros: redhat, suse, mandrake, then slackware)
 774 Windows (no version info, unfortunately)
 356 FreeBSD (4.7, 4.6, 4.62, 4.5, then 4.4)
 115 Solaris (2.8, 2.6, 2.9, 2.7, 2.8/X86, 2.5.1, then 2.7/X86)
  66 OpenBSD (X86: 3.1, 3.0, 3.2, 2.9, 2.8, and then one 3.1/sparc)
  61 Mac OS X (5.5, 6.3, 5.3, 6.2, 6.0, 6.1, then 5.4)
   8 HP-UX
   4 IRIX

As far as Nmap versions, people seem to far prefer the allegedly stable
3.00 version over the 3.10ALPHA series.  I'm glad to see so many
people have upgraded to at least 3.00!  Here are the top 10:

2156 3.00
 460 2.54BETA31
 341 2.54BETA22
 291 2.54BETA30
 155 2.54BETA34
  60 3.10ALPHA4
  57 2.99RC1
  56 2.54BETA33
  53 2.54BETA36
  43 2.54BETA37

Cheers,
-F

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