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Nmap can take a file containing a list of hosts to scan using the -iL flag. Is there similar functionality for a file containing a list of port numbers? I've scoured the man page, online docs at nmap.org and Googled, but nothing as of yet.

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Not by itself, no. But with some quick scripting you can.

For example, on *nix systems:

nmap -p `cat ports.list` ...

This would allow you to maintain a list of ports in a file in a CSV format.

If you would prefer to have one port per line, you can do this (thanks @bonsaiviking) on *nix systems:

nmap -p $(tr '\n' , <ports.list)
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    Will this work on all platforms? Perhaps you want to make clear what the requirements are as the OP may be missing even basic scripting abilities
    – Neil Smithline
    Jun 30, 2016 at 0:53
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    The ports list needs to be separated by commas (,) not whitespace, so this would not work for a newline-delimited file. Try this instead: nmap -p $(tr '\n' , <ports.list)
    – bonsaiviking
    Jun 30, 2016 at 14:06
  • @NeilSmithline Good point, thank you. It looks like OP has already accepted, but I'll update for posterity.
    – h4ckNinja
    Jun 30, 2016 at 23:53
  • @bonsaiviking Yes, I did assume OP wanted it in a CSV. I'll update my answer with that. Thank you.
    – h4ckNinja
    Jun 30, 2016 at 23:54
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Yes, it can, by using the targets-xml Nmap NSE script

Update: Actually, the functionality isn't yet in there, but it looks as if it is planned.

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Yes, Nmap can take a file in the services file format with the --servicedb option. This also implies the -F option, meaning that only the services listed in that file will be scanned.* So just supply the services you want to scan in this format and you can accomplish this goal.

* The exception to this is if the file includes port frequency data like the nmap-services file bundled with Nmap. In that case, -F means to scan the 100 most-likely ports based on that frequency data.

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  • thanks bonsaiviking, in particular I was looking for a way to take port numbers delimited by newlines from the file, having been output by another tool, so the services file format is not desirable in this case.
    – user1330734
    Jun 30, 2016 at 7:57
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Still no direct support from nmap for this option. If you have shell access and can write to a file then create one (here I named it port_list.txt) with a list of ports, one per line, and parse through it using a for loop like so;

for port in $(cat port_list.txt);do nmap -p$port HOSTorIP  ;done

Result would like so (here I`m scanning 127.0.0.1): enter image description here

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