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The Internet Open Source Security News

Nmap Developers Release a Picture of the Web 125

Posted by Soulskill from the pretty-pictures dept.
iago-vL writes "The Nmap Project recently posted an awesome visualization of the top million site icons (favicons) on the Web, sized by relative popularity of sites. This project used the Nmap Scripting Engine, which is capable of performing discovery, vulnerability detection, and anything else you can imagine with lightning speed. We saw last month how an Nmap developer downloaded 170 million Facebook names, and this month it's a million favicons; I wonder what they'll do next?"
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Nmap Developers Release a Picture of the Web More

Nmap Developers Release a Picture of the Web

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  • We saw last month how an Nmap developer downloaded 170 million Facebook names, and this month it's a million favicons; I wonder what they'll do next?

    I'd be willing to guess it will continue to be useless/pointless, yet headline grabbing scans.

    • Re:What will the do next? (Score:5, Funny)

      by InsertWittyNameHere ( 1438813 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @03:48PM (#33346146)
      "We're going to Disney Land!" - NMAP Team

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by spun ( 1352 )

        "We're going to Disney Land!" - NMAP Team

        One thing developers like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take Fyodor to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said, “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.

        • Monkey torture!

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spun ( 1352 )

            There should be a detective show called "Johnny Monkey," because every week you could have a guy say "I ain't gonna get caught by no MONKEY," but then he would, and I don't think I'd ever get tired of that.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by nacturation ( 646836 ) *

          Reminds me of the time Fyodor was over at the farm and he asked me what sex was. I said that instead of telling him what sex was, why don't I take him over to the horse pasture and show him? As we returned from the pasture, it was apparent that he had gained a valuable introduction to sex even though it did take him a few days to walk normally again.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by spun ( 1352 )

            You and I seem to be the only ones who get the reference. Now I feel old.

        • Where's my "+1 Deliciously Cruel" mod when I need it?

    • Buy aother server?

      Theirs is hosed.

      Maybe they should run nmap on it?

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by jeffmeden ( 135043 )

        Sorry, my bad. I clicked the link to the 450MB source image they conveniently provided. Hmm maybe I should go with the scaled down version... only 123MB!

        It's not like any other slashdotters are going to want those files. What could possibly go wrong?

  • Visual proof that there is not enough porn on the internet.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by IICV ( 652597 )

      What are you talking about? Several of those sites are porn sites.

      • youporn is breaking into the big time.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I love how LiveJasmine is one of the highest on the list... Who actually goes there, versus how many people end up there after getting redirected....

          • I love how LiveJasmine is one of the highest on the list... Who actually goes there, versus how many people end up there after getting redirected....

            Agreed! I wasn't actually surprised to see them that high because I can personally attest to the insane number of times I have been redirected there.

            Hey, I just happen to search for information on the Sweet 16 basketball tournament every other night...

      • None of the initially visible ones were, unless the foreign language sites I don't recognise are porn sites.
    • Hogwash! If you zoom it just right and blur your eyes, an outline of Ron Jeremy "pops out" at you

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 )

      Maybe it's just not as concentrated? I don't think we really need a facebook of porn [github.com] when pretty much any idiot with a camera and a decent body can make their own website.

  • Trinity (Score:4, Informative)

    by by (1706743) ( 1706744 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @03:44PM (#33346086)
    Plus, Trinity uses Nmap. [securityfocus.com] Who knows, maybe she used it to visualize The Matrix in her spare time?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by aztektum ( 170569 )

      Was this a fan-film? Because as far I know, there were no sequels to The Matrix [xkcd.com].

      • Was this a fan-film? Because as far I know, there were no sequels to The Matrix [xkcd.com].

        Yup -- I think that fan also made Star Wars I, II and III. Surprised Lucas didn't issue a cease-and-desist [slashdot.org] order after the first one...

      • I'm tired of this meme. There was nothing wrong with Matrix 2 and 3, except for being overly long (like Star Wars Return of the Sominex). The story would have worked better as a single movie.

        • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I'm tired of this meme. There was nothing wrong with Matrix 2 and 3, except for being overly long (like Star Wars Return of the Sominex). The story would have worked better as a single movie.

          What are you talking about? The first movie hinted at a philosophy that moved beyond the metaphor of a computer generated virtual reality feeding off human power.

          If you go back and watch the first one you can write so many fantastic endings that would have been consistent... In fact I was sure I had it figured out before the first movie's credits had rolled - that the matrix itself had been created as an incomplete structure that required the human element for continued viability, but also was instructed t

          • >>>The first movie hinted at a philosophy that moved beyond the metaphor of a computer generated virtual reality feeding off human power.

            No it didn't. Movie #1 was about real physical human beings having their minds trapped in the Matrix (a glorified Sims game), a few humans that had learned the truth and escaped from the game, plus one human that had the skill to rewrite the program at will (thereby giving him unlimited power in the game world). The end.

            Anything else was something you pulled out

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Threni ( 635302 )

          Except that Matrix 3 was rubbish, and which had the hilarious `we're under attack so lets dance around like idiots to some crap music while some bad sex is performed elsewhere in the building` sequence.

          • That was # 2 not 3, and the example you cite is why I said the two movies needed to be trimmed. Or else merged into one single 2 to 2.5 hour movie.

            Try rewatching these movies but fast-forward through the dance scene and other un-necessary crap. You'll find it plays just as good as the first movie.

    • http://nmap.org/movies.html [nmap.org] for the collection of movies including Trinity's scene. :)

  • Top million site icons? can't be right if all are not pron favicons...
  • Does anyone else find it even a little sad that MyWebSearch is ranked #73? Such an easy spyware to get rid of, yet people use it as a "legitimate search" toolbar. *sigh* If only I could find a way to make money off other people's stupidity...

  • IIRC the most important "Nmap developer" frequents slashdot quite a lot [slashdot.org].

    Funny that there is no mention of him in the summary.

  • Make their website handle slashdotting properly?

  • Alexa? (Score:5, Informative)

    by societyofrobots ( 1396043 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @03:57PM (#33346250)

    just an FYI: Its based on data from Alexa. Despite what Alexa claims, I find the results to be off by an order of magnitude from true traffic.

    • Re:Alexa? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by A beautiful mind ( 821714 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:35PM (#33346730)
      I find that to be the case aswell. It's pretty funny how many people take Alexa seriously though. I had a journalist call me a liar based on Alexa's numbers, when I quoted a unique visitors / month number for a website that was based on both Google Analytics and independently audited logging.
      • An ex-competitor of mine made a big deal of his Alexa ranking, always talking about it. His was higher than mine, but of course when your site is small its rank can be heavily skewed by just 1 or 2 users with Alexa toolbar installed. I made a big advertisement with the theme "Alexa=SPYWARE" with quotes from authoritative internet sources and ended it with "don't trust Alexa!". I never heard him mention his ranking again. Funny postscript, Alexa still shows his site ranked higher than mine, even though h
    • Alexa's data is derived from those who have installed the Alexa toolbar. Thus, you only see a subset (and a biased one at that) of all traffic.

  • /. Virgin (Score:5, Funny)

    by by (1706743) ( 1706744 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:05PM (#33346368)
    Incidentally, just to the right of the Slashdot icon [nmap.org] lives Virgin [nmap.org]

    A little too close to home for the /. crowd, methinks...

  • All this data collected by Nmap isn't even a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of data collected by Google and web advertisers.

    Put your tinfoil hat back on and go watch Hackers.

  • Scope. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Securityemo ( 1407943 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:11PM (#33346426) Journal
    I was really struck by this image, actually. It gives you a visual feel for how vast the net is, with all the favicons stretching back into space until they're just indistinguishable dots. And for those who complain about uselessness, download it and give it a go yourself! To get ranges, just use whois or a http://www.iana.org/numbers/ [iana.org] search on a relevant ip/hostname, and to map routing paths use the zenmap frontend - the radial visualization is great, but a bit slow for large numbers. You can also use the -oX option to output a scan in XML, and import it into zenmap later; zenmap also aggregates scans for you. The script scan engine is also geared towards penetration testing/exploitation, of course, but you can ignore "offensive" parts. Just remember to read the documentation, if you want to keep a low profile.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      > It gives you a visual feel for how vast the net is,
      > with all the favicons stretching back into space
      > until they're just indistinguishable dots.

      Actually, this image doesn't even scratch the surface on that, because they cut it off at a mere million sites. The top million sites may account for most of the traffic, but it's a tiny fraction of the total number of actual sites (and I mean *actual* sites, not parked domains). There are fairly popular sites (as in, thousands of *regular* readers) th

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        Heck, most colleges and even a lot of state university websites don't show up on that image, only the really big ones. For kicks I looked up the only accreditation agency I could think of off the top of my head, and it was sized at 8x8 pixels. Nevermind about local K-12 school districts and private schools and regional little league organizations and such. No way they'd show up.

  • Slashdotted already? (Score:3, Funny)

    by nitsew ( 991812 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:12PM (#33346444)
    I think the nmap.org icon just grew exponentially.

  • They should update their script to read the apple-touch-icon link tag, since it points to a considerably better quality icon than favicon.

    • The .ico format supports better resolutions in one file, so someone could have used better images. Much better than a weird apple only tag.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by BitZtream ( 692029 )

        Considering they only really use the 16x16 icon in the file, its really retarded to say it supports 'better' formats. If you're putting anything other than a 16x16x256 icon in your favicon.ico then you're just wasting bandwidth, all other formats will be ignored anyway.

        The .ICO format is while perfectly usable, still out of date and offers no advantage over other icon formats which use more sane image qualities like real transparency.

        For a favicon, 16x16x256 is as high as you're ever going to use. No sens

  • oh ... I dunno, get slashdotted?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      That's an interesting idea: a diagram of the slashdotting effect as it unfolds. For example, a cause-link showing how a full GET queue melts the RAM, which then melts the bus, which gives the CPU nowhere to send data, and thus it melts, catching the case on fire, which melts the hard-drive casing, causing the spinning hard-drive platter to shoot out and thunk the poor sys admin in the nuts, turning him female, which results in management paying him less. Chart that, Nmap.

      • Oh great. Now intel is going to market their SSD's claiming it protects they balls of sysadmins everywhere.

        Won't someone think of the sysadmins?

        Disclaimer: I love my SSD to teeny tiny bits, all 80 billion of them.

  • Missing information... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by It doesn't come easy ( 695416 ) * on Monday August 23, 2010 @04:19PM (#33346534) Journal
    ...someone needs to add a dynamic "you are here" pointer...
  • ~drum roll~

    Google, Youtube, Facebook, Wikipedia, & Yahoo. No surprises.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by shutdown -p now ( 807394 )

      It seems that Yahoo and MSN are tied up (at least visually they're of the same size).

      What I'm genuinely curious about is why is Microsoft website is so popular (the icon is as big as the one for Twitter)? I can understand MSN and Bing, but what are people doing browsing microsoft.com so much? I thought that maybe it's Hotmail, but no, it's got a different icon...

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by BitZtream ( 692029 )

        Does msdn.microsoft.com share the same one (I'm too lazy to look) because thats pretty much the only site I visit EVERY day, looking up documentation for various things. I'm betting a lot of techies spend time on MS.com everyday for the same sort of thing.

        Though, I doubt it should make that much of an impression compared to all the other non-techies out there.

        • Both MSDN and TechNet have different icons. So far as I can see, the "M" icon is only used for the main site - various services underneath all have their own icons.

      • Microsoft actually has two of them (the M and Windows logo) and both are pretty big. Between them there's 33 websites so I'd actually assume a lot of other sites are ripping off their favicons (the M and the Windows logo).
      • Internet Explorer uses msn.com as the default page.... you'd be surprised at how many people dont change it, especially those who would install the alex toolbar (where the generate the stats)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by tehcyder ( 746570 )

        What I'm genuinely curious about is why is Microsoft website is so popular

        I'd guess it's from automatic Windows updates.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm continuously surprised that Yahoo is still around, somehow relevant, and popular.

  • Gotta love how "centered" and notably scaled are Xvideos and Redtube icons...
    Once again the godfathers of porn show how much "Corleone" they are!

  • Total Perspective Vortex (Score:5, Funny)

    by Target Practice ( 79470 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @05:02PM (#33347106)

    "The company website is *down*", laments a snivelling luser on my way in through the door.

    "Ah, is it, then? Excellent! I'll take care of it in my office." The luser unfortunately shadows me through the hallway, running through my RFID-secured doorway after I open it. My office is dimly lit, with one focus bulb shining on a poster behind my monitor. I sit at my terminal, browsing my e-mail while drinking my coffee.

    "But the website..."

    I sigh. Why do they seem most hopeful when I try to ignore them so thoroughly? I gesture to the illuminated poster hanging on my wall. It's a massive framed artwork from Nmap's team of the favicons of the web's most visited websites. Customized slightly, of course. Where our site sits at the farthest edge of the bottom left of the page, I have mounted a microscopic flag with the tiny words "You Are Here" written on it in gold.

    There is silence as the luser peers at the poster. Then, I hear a small, soul-crushed whimper as he finds his grand company's place on the web, and hear him shuffle from the room, and my door softly close behind him. I grin. Sometimes, it's all too easy to crush souls on Monday mornings...

  • ...if so many of the favicons didn't involve tits or sex-related imagery. Seriously, zoom in and scroll around. Absolutely fapulous... :S

  • SVG favicons, please! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    16x16 (or 32x32) favicons are really too ugly when zoomed in...

  • The format in which it is presented is not good for much of anything except showing off usage. They could have represented the data just as easily (and more usefully) by putting them all, as 16 x 16 graphics, in a matrix ordered by frequency.

  • It presumably contains a lot of copyrighted images. Maybe its under fair-use/research?

  • The amazon icon is so small, it's hard to find. You need to zoom in. From the facebook icon look to the lower left for the white s on an orange square. Below that is a small red HT. Right below that at the right is amazon, a black a with an orange curved arrow under it.
  • I cannot see the logo of any traditional media outlet in that display; no CNN, News Limited anything, no BBC etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      I cannot see the logo of any traditional media outlet in that display; no CNN, News Limited anything, no BBC etc.

      Because none of the content is published under "News LTD". It's published under 1000 different brands each too small to count but publishing the same stories. In the end, most stories end up coming from Rueters or AP.

    • I noticed The New York Times.

  • Not that I'm a fan, but I was surprised to see that foxnews.com wasn't even in the list, but cnn.com was. I'm sure that the popularity of websites differs from that of their cable news shows, but I wouldn't have expected it to differ that much. The CNN icon is clearly visible and Fox doesn't even show up? I can't help but think that might be a mistake.

    • CNN is bigger globally than Fox News,.I live in europe and was watching live coverage of Gulf War 1 on CNN via analogue satellite way back when

  • I wonder why Yandex (the icon with Cyrillic 'Ya' - mirrored R as in "Toys'R'Us") appears twice. There is no differentiation between them like e.g. between Yahoo Web Hosting and Yahoo Japan.

    • I noticed that too. An aggregation error? If you look at the top 70 (or so) sites at the bottom the two are listed as:

      Yandex 7 sites have a combined reach of 2.65%

      Yandex 2 sites have a combined reach of 2.42%

  • What Will They Do Next? (Score:3, Funny)

    by phantomcircuit ( 938963 ) on Monday August 23, 2010 @08:00PM (#33349154) Homepage

    What Will They Do Next? Anti-Aliasing

    • It's amazing to see the quality of the facebook icon on this image. It looks perfectly sharp, specially compared to the google icons. Good designer work!
  • Map of online communities [xkcd.com]. I have the poster on my wall. Too bad it's a bit out of date; after all, I can still see MySpace on there without a magnifying glass.
  • Deviant Art, a site that is normally ranked near the other side of 100, currently 115 worldwide, is nowhere to be found. How accurate can this map be if it is missing such a popular site? Judging by the size of the ICQ.com icon, which is ranked in the 300s, it would be pretty damn hard to miss. They need to try again.
  • What is meant by "the sum of the reach of all sites using that icon"? Are they simply scaling icons based on Alexa rankings, or is there something more profound going on here that I'm missing? Six beers says it's the latter.
  • It would have been cool if it was in 3D

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