Re: Service name capitalization in Nmap?

[Kris Katterjohn <katterjohn () gmail com>]

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Fyodor wrote:
> In my upcoming Nmap book, I've been rather torn about how to
> capitalize various service names.  On the one hand, acronyms such as
> DNS, SMTP, and VoIP arguably look better when "properly" capitalized.
> On the other hand, Nmap uses so many service names that the approach
> leads to lots of capitalization all over the page.  In addition, they
> are always lowercase in Nmap output (at least in the port table).  And
> readers often get confused/annoyed when I use lowercase when quoting
> Nmap directly, but then capitalize a term differently in the next
> sentence.
>
> I was thinking of using this as an excuse to keep them all lowercase
> in the book.  But maybe I should just capitalize them in Nmap instead.
> Which of these port tables do you like better?
>
> [Current scan of scanme.nmap.org]
> PORT    STATE  SERVICE VERSION
> 22/tcp  open   ssh     OpenSSH 4.3 (protocol 2.0)
> 25/tcp  closed smtp
> 53/tcp  open   domain  ISC BIND 9.3.4
> 70/tcp  closed gopher
> 80/tcp  open   http    Apache httpd 2.2.2 ((Fedora))
> 113/tcp closed auth
>
> [scan of same, but capitalize acronyms]
> PORT    STATE  SERVICE VERSION
> 22/tcp  open   SSH     OpenSSH 4.3 (protocol 2.0)
> 25/tcp  closed SMTP
> 53/tcp  open   domain  ISC BIND 9.3.4
> 70/tcp  closed gopher
> 80/tcp  open   HTTP    Apache httpd 2.2.2 ((Fedora))
> 113/tcp closed auth

I really dislike the capitalization in the output.

I think using the lowercased form when referring to Nmap's output but using
the capitalized form when talking about the actual protocol is fine (and the
best option I can see).  I would also prefer the idea of using all lowercase
in the book to capitalization in Nmap's output if you want to pick between
these other ideas.

> Cheers,
> -F

Thanks,
Kris Katterjohn

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