The Insecure.org developers have announced the release of version 5.0 of Nmap, their popular network scanner and mapper. The release features nearly 600 significant changes and the developers consider it to be "the most important Nmap release since 1997". Major improvements to the network scanner include the addition of the Ndiff scan comparison tool and the Nmap Scripting Engine
Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime.