Network Scan

What This Skill Does

The Network Scan skill is a robust utility designed for OpenClaw AI agents to perform reconnaissance and discovery on local or remote network segments. By leveraging the industry-standard nmap tool, this skill enables the agent to identify active hosts, verify port availability, and assess network surface areas. It is particularly adept at handling diverse target formats, ranging from specific IP addresses and comma-separated lists to complex CIDR blocks and dynamic IP ranges. Whether you are troubleshooting connectivity or performing security audits, this skill acts as a direct interface to network-level diagnostics.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw command-line interface. Execute the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/apacheua/network-scan

Once installed, ensure that your environment has nmap installed and properly configured in your system path, as the skill serves as a wrapper for these binary operations.

Use Cases

1. Network Auditing: Quickly identify unauthorized devices or unexpected open ports on your home or office network.
2. Troubleshooting: Diagnose firewall issues by verifying if specific services are reachable on ports like 80 or 443 across a subnet.
3. Security Assessment: Map the attack surface of a small network to ensure that only intended services are exposed.
4. Infrastructure Management: Generate lists of active hosts within a dynamic range to facilitate asset tracking.

Example Prompts

1. "Perform a fast scan of the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet, focusing only on common web ports like 80 and 443, and exclude my workstation at 192.168.1.5."
2. "Scan the range 192.168.1.10 to 192.168.1.50 for all open ports and save the results for review. Limit the output to 20 hosts to speed up the process."
3. "Is the server at 10.0.0.5 reachable on ports 22 and 80? Use a 10-second timeout for this check."

Tips & Limitations

• Permissions: Network scanning often requires administrative privileges to perform certain types of probes (like SYN scans). Ensure your agent runs with the appropriate system permissions.
• Performance: When scanning large CIDR blocks, use the --hosts-limit and --fast flags to avoid long wait times and potential network congestion.
• Precision: The skill is intended for standard network discovery. For deep vulnerability assessment or exploitation, specialized security tools should be used instead.
• Network Impact: Be mindful that frequent, high-intensity scans can trigger intrusion detection systems or security alerts in corporate environments.