Hey - I’m Eric. I ride motorcycles, travel the world with my wife, and love building creative tools. I made the cybersecurity tool Zero-E and the Manaflare BG3 mod (yep, I’m in the credits). I also build tools, ranges, and HHC worlds for Counter Hack - including this one.
In the day job I help organizations get more secure with pentests (network & physical focus). Quick tip: stay laser-focused on your goals - it’s how I ended up at Counter Hack.
Meet one of the most useful pentester tools: Nmap - like X-ray vision for networks. I’ve set up a perfect lab for you to learn the fundamentals.
Task: Find and connect to the wardriving rig’s service on my motorcycle.
This task is guided by the system. Therefore, I will only show the commands and most important console outputs here:
Welcome to the Intro to Nmap terminal! We will learn some Nmap basics by running commands to answer the questions asked, which will guide us in finding and connecting to the wardriving rig's service.
Run the command "hint" to receive a hint.
1) When run without any options, nmap performs a TCP port scan of the top 1000 ports. Run a default nmap scan of 127.0.12.25 and see which port is open.
elf@b8dfbc976d06:~$ nmap 127.0.12.25
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2025-11-09 11:05 UTC
...
PORT STATE SERVICE
8080/tcp open http-proxy
...
2) Sometimes the top 1000 ports are not enough. Run an nmap scan of all TCP ports on 127.0.12.25 and see which port is open.
elf@b8dfbc976d06:~$ nmap 127.0.12.25 -p -
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2025-11-09 11:05 UTC
...
PORT STATE SERVICE
24601/tcp open unknown
...
3) Nmap can also scan a range of IP addresses. Scan the range 127.0.12.20 - 127.0.12.28 and see which has a port open.
elf@b8dfbc976d06:~$ nmap 127.0.12.20-28
Nmap scan report for 127.0.12.23
...
PORT STATE SERVICE
8080/tcp open http-proxy
...
4) Nmap has a version detection engine, to help determine what services are running on a given port. What service is running on 127.0.12.25 TCP port 8080?
elf@b8dfbc976d06:~$ nmap 127.0.12.25 -p 8080 -A
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2025-11-09 11:07 UTC
...
PORT STATE SERVICE VERSION
8080/tcp open http SimpleHTTPServer 0.6 (Python 3.10.12)
|_http-server-header: SimpleHTTP/0.6 Python/3.10.12
|_http-title: Directory listing for /
...
5) Sometimes you just want to interact with a port, which is a perfect job for Ncat! Use the ncat tool to connect to TCP port 24601 on 127.0.12.25 and view the banner returned.
elf@b8dfbc976d06:~$ ncat 127.0.12.25 24601
Welcome to the WarDriver 9000!
Terminated
Congratulations, you finished the Intro to Nmap and found the wardriving rig's service!
Type "exit" to close...