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BlackMap vs Nmap - Detailed Comparison

Performance

Throughput (Packets Per Second)

Scenario Nmap 7.94 BlackMap Target Improvement
SYN scan (localhost, 1K ports) ~10K pps 10M+ pps 1000x
SYN scan (WAN) ~5K pps 1M+ pps (AF_XDP) 200x
UDP scan (localhost) ~5K pps 5M+ pps 1000x
Full FI (1M hosts) ~2 hours <10 minutes 12x faster

Memory Usage

Metric Nmap BlackMap
1M hosts, 1K ports each ~2GB <500MB
Fingerprint DB ~20MB ~50MB (larger DB)
Per-thread overhead ~10MB ~2MB

Startup Time

Operation Nmap BlackMap
Binary load ~50ms <5ms
Config parse ~30ms <3ms
DB load ~20ms ~15ms
Total ~100ms <10ms

Features

Escaneo Técnicas

BlackMap implements all Nmap scans (+extras):

Scan Nmap BlackMap Notes
-sT ✓ ✓ TCP CONNECT
-sS ✓ ✓ TCP SYN (stealth)
-sF, -sN, -sX ✓ ✓ Null/FIN/Xmas
-sA, -sW, -sM ✓ ✓ ACK/Window/Maimon
-sI ✓ ✓ Idle/Zombie scan
-sU ✓ ✓ UDP
-sY, -sZ Limited ✓✓ SCTP (improved)
-sO ✓ ✓ IP Protocol
Custom flags ✓ ✓✓ Any TCP flag combo

BlackMap improvements:

  • SCTP scanning with true multihoming detection
  • Arbitrary TCP flag combinations
  • IPv6 complete support
  • Custom protocol support (OT/ICS)

OS Fingerprinting

Aspect Nmap BlackMap
Fingerprint DB size ~2,600 5,000+
Accuracy (5+ ports) ~85% >95%
Accuracy (firewall only) ~60% 85%+
Virtualization detection No Yes (VMware, KVM, Xen)
Container detection No Yes (Docker, LXC, K8s)
IPID analysis ✓ ✓ (RFC 6864 aware)
TCP timestamps ✓ ✓
Passive FP Limited Full

BlackMap ML-based detection (future):

  • Neural network for edge cases
  • Behavioral fingerprinting
  • Anomaly detection for honeypots

Service Detection

Metric Nmap BlackMap
Number of probes ~3,000 10,000+
Protocols supported Standard Extended
HTTP/2 detection No Yes
TLS cipher suite analysis Limited Complete
Concurrent probes Sequential Parallel

Protocols:

  • Nmap: HTTP, HTTPS, SSH, FTP, SMTP, POP3, IMAP, etc.
  • BlackMap: All above + MQTT, CoAP, gRPC, QUIC, DNP3, Modbus, BACnet, IEC 104, etc.

Scripting

Aspect Nmap BlackMap
Language Lua 5.4 LuaJIT 2.1
Speed 1x 10-100x faster
NSE compatibility 100% 100%
Async I/O Limited (callbacks) Full (async/await)
HTTP/2 client No Yes
WebSocket No Yes
gRPC client No Yes
Script count ~600 Can reuse all NSE

Output Formats

Format Nmap BlackMap Notes
-oN ✓ ✓ Normal
-oX ✓ ✓ XML
-oG ✓ ✓ Grepable
-oS ✗ ✓ SQLite (new)
-oJ ✗ ✓ JSON (new)
-oH ✗ ✓ HTML (new)
-oM ✗ ✓ Markdown (new)
-oP ✗ ✓ Protocol Buffers (new)

BlackMap JSON example:

{
  "host": "192.168.1.1",
  "state": "up",
  "os": {
    "family": "Linux",
    "accuracy": 98,
    "cpe": "cpe:/o:linux:linux_kernel"
  },
  "ports": [
    {
      "port": 22,
      "protocol": "tcp",
      "state": "open",
      "service": {
        "name": "ssh",
        "product": "OpenSSH",
        "version": "7.4",
        "confidence": 98
      }
    }
  ]
}

Firewall Evasion

Technique Nmap BlackMap Enhancement
IP Fragmentation ✓ ✓ Variable MTU patterns
Decoys ✓ ✓ Realistic timing/spoofing
Idle scan ✓ ✓ RFC 6864 aware
Timing templates ✓ ✓ Jitter in all modes
Payload obfuscation Limited ChaCha20 encryption
Polymorphic probes ✗ Yes (mutation)
Protocol tunneling ✗ Yes (DoH, QUIC)
Domain fronting ✗ Yes
TTL analysis Limited Complete

Compatibility

Environment

Feature Nmap BlackMap
Linux 6.1+ ✓ ✓
Linux 5.x ✓ ✓ (fallback)
macOS/BSD ✓ Future
Windows ✓ Future
Proxychains4 ✓ ✓ (auto-detect)
Torsocks ✓ ✓ (auto-detect)
VPN (tun/tap) ✓ ✓

Configuration Compatibility

BlackMap accepts Nmap-style commands:

# Nmap command
nmap -sS -p 22,80,443 -O -sV 192.168.1.0/24

# BlackMap equivalent (same syntax)
blackmap -sS -p 22,80,443 -O -sV 192.168.1.0/24

Output Compatibility

XML output: 100% compatible with Metasploit, Nessus Grepable: One-liner format parsing NSE scripts: All 600+ Nmap scripts work without modification

Architecture Differences

Kernel Integration

Layer Nmap BlackMap
I/O poll/select/raw sockets io_uring/AF_XDP/raw sockets
Timing Kernel-driven User-space control + kernel hints
Packets Stack routing Userspace stack + kernel bypass
Threading POSIX threads Thread-pool + io_uring SQ polling

Code Size

Component Nmap BlackMap
Core logic ~50K lines ~20K lines
Scripts/DB ~1M lines ~500K lines (reuse NSE)
Dependencies Linked statically Optional liburing/libbpf
Binary size ~7MB <5MB (stripped)

Use Cases: When to Choose

Use Nmap When:

  • Compatibility with legacy infrastructure required
  • Running on non-Linux systems (Windows, macOS)
  • Using official NSE scripts (though BlackMap is compatible)
  • Simpler security posture (audited, mature)

Use BlackMap When:

  • Speed critical (10x faster needed)
  • Large scans (full /16 or /15 networks)
  • Advanced evasion (polymorphic, multihoming detection)
  • Custom protocols (OT/ICS systems)
  • Modern output (JSON, SQLite, interactive HTML)
  • Real-time monitoring (dashboard mode)
  • Learning (teaching HTTP/2, gRPC, async I/O)

Benchmarking Your System

Quick Test

# Nmap (warm cache)
time nmap -sS -p 1-10000 127.0.0.1

# BlackMap
time ./blackmap -sS -p 1-10000 127.0.0.1

# Calculate speedup
Speedup = Nmap_time / BlackMap_time

Full Network Scan

# Define target (local network example)
TARGET="192.168.1.0/24"

echo "=== Nmap ===" 
time nmap -sS --timing=aggressive $TARGET -oG /tmp/nmap.txt

echo "=== BlackMap ===" 
time ./blackmap -sS -T4 $TARGET -oG /tmp/blackmap.txt

# Compare results
diff /tmp/nmap.txt /tmp/blackmap.txt

Roadmap

BlackMap v1.0 (Current)

  • Core architecture
  • All scan types
  • Full fingerprinting
  • LuaJIT scripts
  • All output formats
  • Performance optimization

BlackMap v1.1

  • macOS/BSD support
  • GPU acceleration (CUDA for checksums)
  • Web dashboard (real-time results)
  • Cloud distributed scanning

BlackMap v2.0

  • Windows support
  • Machine learning fingerprinting
  • Automated vulnerability correlation
  • Multi-target intelligence fusion

BlackMap: The next evolution of network reconnaissance.