Port scan mac os terminal

How to Use the Port Scanner in macOS Network Utility?

macOS Network Utility is a collection of various terminal commands for which a single graphical shell has been made. Thanks to this unification, this utility is the most important tool for checking the network and everything connected with it. No wonder the Network Utility is present even on the macOS default installation set.

Each tab is a completely independent tool. In Windows, the command line is used for the same tasks, Apple made a beautiful shell for convenience.

In macOS you can also use the Terminal to work with the network, but it is much easier to run the Network utility located in the Utilities folder.

In this article we will look at the operation of the Mac Port Scanner in detail.

Port Scanner on Mac

Port scanner is a software tool designed to search for hosts on a network with the right ports open. These programs are usually used by system administrators and network engineers to check the security of their networks and attackers to break into the network. You can search for a number of open ports on a single host, or one specific port on many hosts. The latter is characteristic of the activities of a number of network worms.

The process itself is called port scanning or (in the case where many hosts are checked) network scanning. Port scanning can be the first step in the hacking process or preventing hacking, helping to identify potential attack targets. Using the appropriate tools, sending data packets and analyzing responses, the services running on the machine (Web server, FTP server, mail server, etc.) can be investigated, their version numbers and the operating system used.

How to Scan Ports

• Use Command + Space for Spotlight search;
• Type Network Utility;

• Open Port Scan tab;
• Enter the IP or domain name you wish to scan and press “Scan”;
• Optional, but not necessarily recommended, you can set a port range to scan between specific set of active services;

• Scan results shown us that TCPports 22, 88, 445 are open for host 192.168.31.81.

And the Port Scan Utility allows you to check the firewall settings on your computer or check port usage. You can find out which ports are open and which are not. This information will be useful, for example, to properly configure torrent clients.

Also you can find and turned off open ports you haven’t use with your device (FTP, AFP, SQL, etc.).

Conclusion

Today it is very difficult to imagine a device that is not connected to the Internet. In addition to the huge number of opportunities that the network provides, it is also a huge risk associated with the safety of our devices. That is why the basic knowledge of the network are becoming increasingly in demand even for ordinary users.

In general, the Network Utility can be attributed to undeservedly hidden macOS tools. It will be useful to you both in case of problems with the network, and to satisfy your own curiosity.

It’s the best time to ask questions and give us your feedback in comments.

Hi there! My Name is Vincent Lago! My goal is to share insightful reviews, guides, and manuals for people looking to know more about current solutions for Apple hardware and OS. I have years of technological background knowledge including owning a custom iMacs & PCs which was using for different types of business. And now, I want to share my experience with you.

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How to Scan Your Local Network with Terminal on macOS

The Terminal in macOS is one handy tool that few people make use of. Here we will show you how you can use the Terminal in macOS to scan your local network for troubleshooting, maintenance and general curiosity. It works a little differently from Linux’s utilities, with different flags in some cases, so don’t assume Linux skills will be accurate on macOS.

Also read: How to Use the macOS Terminal: A Beginners’ Guide

Scan Your Local Network’s Open Ports with nmap

nmap is the king of command-line port scanners on macOS, but you’ll need to install it first.

Install nmap with Homebrew

to download and install nmap and any necessary dependencies.

Scan with nmap

nmap is built to scan a provided hostname or network address and return a list of open ports. The name stands for “network mapper,” but it’s more of a port mapper.

The simplest way to run nmap is with an IP address or range of IP addresses specified as the target; replace with the appropriate IP address to scan on your local network. This specific command scans nmap’s educational testing server at scanme.org.

To scan for open ports on a range of IP addresses, use a slash.

To find the IP addresses of your router and various devices on your network, you can run arp or ipconfig .

Using the -A flag will force nmap to scan more aggressively, returning significantly more information but transparently revealing your presence in the server logs. The -A flag must be run with sudo.

This scans the defined IP address for the operating system ( -O ). Again, it must be run with sudo.

If you want to run nmap a little more stealthily, use the -sS flag:

This has the effect of forcing “half-open” scanning. This sends a TCP SYN packet to check if the port is open, but does not respond with an ACK packet when receiving an affirmative response. As such, the remote server likely won’t log the scan.

The -sS flag and other scanning mode switches must be run with sudo. For example, the -sP mode switch will scan for IP addresses but not ports, functioning something like arp below. See the nmap man page for more scanning modes.

To get more verbose results, add the -vv or -v3 tag. This will turn on more verbose logging levels, producing a more readable but longer standard output. Depending on what you’re looking for, these flags might help you find it.

Of course, you can always pipe the results of nmap into grep to search for specific results. If you wanted to check port 22 only, for example, you might run the command below:

This will return no lines if the port is not available and return the port’s status line if available.

Also read: How to Use the ss Command to Monitor Network Connections in Linux

Scan Your Local Network’s Active IP Addresses with arp

arp scans your local network for connected devices. Because arp is designed to create and modify address resolution protocols, it has limited tools available for scanning your network. But it ships on every Mac, and it’s a rapid way to get specific information.

To see a list of all responding devices currently connected to your network, open Terminal and run:

This returns a list of all devices connected to your network, reported by IP address and MAC address.

There isn’t much more to arp. You can run arp -a -i en0 to only get reports from your network interface en0, but that’s all.

Conclusion

The most powerful tool for scanning your local network on macOS is nmap. arp is also useful for running a ping sweep across the network. ipconfig can report results for a specific interface but is more useful for reporting interface information than scanning a network.

Alexander Fox is a tech and science writer based in Philadelphia, PA with one cat, three Macs and more USB cables than he could ever use.

One comment

When I was a brand new computer user back in 1998 (an Apple Mac – used entirely for personal home-computing) I was almost immediately targeted and tricked by co-workers at my factory job into inserting a floppy disk into my tower’s floppy drive. Nothing came up but a smiley face and nothing seemed to happen when I clicked on it (they said it was free Juno email software. 🙄). So I ejected it and went on my way. In 2003 it became apparent that these co-workers had access to everything I did on my Mac. I did a clean install and started over but nothing seemed to help. I did seem to lose them for one year when I subscribed to a satellite Internet service but it proved to be unreliable (and expensive!) so I went back to the phone line connection which had been dial-up but by then was DSL. They immediately were back on my trail (they just couldn’t help taunting me with their knowledge of my activities). I’m on my 3rd computer since then but am still being monitored. The thought occurred to me that they may have placed me on a network of some kind which gives them access to all (and I mean ALL) my stuff. If something like that is even possible, is there a way to identify this “external” network and remove my computer from it? Any help you might be able to lend would be more than appreciated. Thank you.

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How to Use the Port Scanner in Mac OS X Network Utility

Mac OS X comes with a bundled port scanner tool, just one of a variety of features tucked into the ever useful Network Utility app. That means you don’t need to bother with the command line or install more advanced tools like nmap to quickly scan for open ports on a given IP or domain, instead you can do it all through the friendly graphical interface. Despite being a fairly advanced utility, it’s actually very easy to use.

Quick sidenote: remember that newer releases of Mac OS X have relocated Network Utility to be buried in a system folder, that doesn’t mean it can’t be used, it just means you have to either make an alias, launch it from Spotlight, or get to it from System Info. For the purpose of this walkthrough we’ll use Spotlight to launch Network Utility and start the scan since it’s the easiest and quickest route, though if you plan on using the tool often you’ll probably want to make an alias yourself. OK, let’s jump right to scanning ports.

How to Scan Ports on an IP or Domain from Mac OS X

You can choose any local or remote IP to scan, if you’re solitary on a network (or even air gapped) and still want to try this out yourself, use the loopback IP of “127.0.0.1” as the target:

1. Hit Command+Spacebar to summon Spotlight and type “Network Utility” followed by the return key to launch the Network Utility app
2. Select the “Port Scan” tab
3. Enter the IP or domain name you wish to scan for open ports and choose “scan”
4. Optional, but not necessarily recommended, you can set a port range to scan between if you just want to search for a specific set of active services

127.0.0.1 or “localhost” will just check the local Mac for open ports, if you’re new to port scanning that may be the preferred way to go since most reasonably well secured remote domains reject incoming requests or don’t respond to them.

Let the Port Scan tool run and you will quickly start to see any open TCP ports and their traditionally identified usage. For example, you may see something like this if you scan localhost (127.0.0.1):

Port Scan has started…
Port Scanning host: 127.0.0.1
Open TCP Port: 22 ssh
Open TCP Port: 80 http
Open TCP Port: 88 kerberos
Open TCP Port: 445 microsoft-ds
Open TCP Port: 548 afpovertcp
Open TCP Port: 631 ipp
Open TCP Port: 3689 daap

Visible ports are going to differ per machine depending on what services and servers are available, but if you’re scanning Macs and PC’s you’ll commonly find web servers, SMB Windows sharing port 445, AFP Apple File Sharing on port 548, maybe active visible SSH server on 22, UDP servers, and potentially a wide variety of others. The port scan will go quite high as it scans, so just let it run if you want to see everything.

If you see absolutely nothing come up but you know an IP is active with open services, either the machine isn’t broadcasting, the recipient machine is rejecting all requests, or perhaps a strong firewall is configured. This makes Network Utility’s port scanner an excellent way to quickly check security and test out potential vulnerabilities or active services on neighboring Macs, iOS devices, Windows, Linux machines, and whatever other computers are getting scanned.

Network Utility is obviously limited to the Mac, and while there are no built-in tools on the iOS side of things, it is possible to perform port scanning from an iPhone and iPad with the fing app a free tool that is very handy addition to the advanced iOS users toolkit.

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