Unicornscan – Asynchronous Port Scanning with a Researcher’s Touch

What is Unicornscan

Unicornscan is a high-performance, asynchronous port scanner built with one goal in mind: collect as much network info as possible, as fast and accurately as possible. Unlike Nmap, which prioritizes depth and stealth, Unicornscan goes wide — scanning large address spaces, quickly and efficiently.

It’s used in research, red teaming, and environments where speed matters more than quiet. It doesn’t just tell you which ports are open — it can fingerprint services, grab banners, and track TCP/IP stack behavior across massive networks.

The downside? It’s not as user-friendly as Nmap. But for those who know what they’re doing, Unicornscan opens doors.

Technical Characteristics

How It Works Day-to-Day

You start it from the terminal, point it at an IP range, and let it run. It opens a lot of sockets, very quickly — and logs results in its own internal format. You can later replay those results, pipe them into SQL, or grep for specific behaviors.

Example for TCP SYN scan:

unicornscan -Iv 10.0.0.0/8:a

Or to scan for HTTP servers on a whole /16:

unicornscan 192.168.1.0/16:80

It’s not quiet. But it’s fast — and detailed.

Where It’s Actually Useful

– Scanning big address blocks where Nmap would choke or slow down
– Collecting large-scale TCP response data for analysis
– Researching service banners or fingerprinting stack behavior
– Red teaming engagements where stealth isn’t the priority
– Feeding results into other tools or custom analysis pipelines