Chapter 3. Extending Hydra and Nmap

Many security tools do not support a plug-in architecture, making extending these tools somewhat challenging. However, if your security tool uses a modular architecture, or if it uses a configurable database for specifying its behavior, you can extend it more easily. In this chapter we demonstrate how to extend the popular open source security tool, Hydra, to support an additional protocol, as well as adding signatures to the service signature file for the popular port scanner, Nmap, to recognize additional services.

By extending existing tools to support additional protocols and services, you can test for security vulnerabilities in networks where nonstandard or proprietary protocols and services exist, without creating an entirely new tool from scratch.