asphyxia 0.4.0

A fast and efficient network scanner written in Rust
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# Asphyxia

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[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/crates/l/asphyxia.svg)](LICENSE)

A fast and efficient network scanner written in Rust.

## Description

Asphyxia is a command-line network scanner that helps you discover open ports on a host and find reachable hosts on a network. It runs scans in parallel for speed and shows live progress while it works.

## Features

- **Port scanning** — scan a range of ports or a specific comma-separated list on a target host.
- **Address scanning** — check a single IP, scan an IP range, or scan an entire subnet (CIDR).
- **IPv4 and IPv6** — every scan mode accepts both address families.
- **Configurable timeout** — tune the per-connection timeout with `--timeout`.
- **Parallel execution** — scans run concurrently via [rayon](https://crates.io/crates/rayon), with tunable concurrency (`--concurrency`) for large subnet scans.
- **Live progress bars** — long-running scans show real-time progress.
- **Colorized output** — readable, colored terminal output.

> Note: IPv6 subnet and range scans are capped at 65 536 addresses (e.g. a `/112`), since larger IPv6 spaces are impractical to walk exhaustively.

## Installation

### Homebrew (macOS & Linux)

```bash
brew tap jtprogru/tap
brew install jtprogru/tap/asphyxia
```

The formula is published automatically to the [jtprogru/homebrew-tap](https://github.com/jtprogru/homebrew-tap) tap on every release and supports macOS (Apple Silicon) and Linux (x86_64 & arm64).

### Cargo

Install the latest published release from [crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/asphyxia):

```bash
cargo install asphyxia
```

Or install the current `main` branch straight from the repository:

```bash
cargo install --git https://github.com/jtprogru/asphyxia
```

### Prebuilt binaries

Download the archive for your platform from the [latest release](https://github.com/jtprogru/asphyxia/releases/latest), unzip it, and place the `asphyxia` binary somewhere on your `PATH`. Builds are provided for:

- Linux: `x86_64`, `aarch64`
- macOS: `aarch64` (Apple Silicon)

Each archive is shipped with a detached GPG signature (`.asc`). After importing the signing key you can verify an archive with:

```bash
gpg --verify asphyxia-<target>.zip.asc asphyxia-<target>.zip
```

### Building from source

Requires Rust 1.88 or newer (the project uses the 2024 edition).

```bash
git clone https://github.com/jtprogru/asphyxia.git
cd asphyxia
cargo build --release
```

The compiled binary will be available at `target/release/asphyxia`.

## Usage

Asphyxia exposes two subcommands: `ps` (port scan) and `as` (address scan).

```bash
asphyxia --help        # general help
asphyxia ps --help     # port scan options
asphyxia as --help     # address scan options
```

### Port scanning (`ps`)

```bash
# Scan a range of ports (start end)
asphyxia ps -t example.com -r 80 443

# Scan specific ports (comma-separated)
asphyxia ps -t example.com -s 22,80,443,8080

# Scan an IPv6 host with a shorter timeout
asphyxia ps -t 2001:db8::1 -s 22,80,443 --timeout 500
```

| Flag | Description |
|------|-------------|
| `-t, --host <HOST>` | Target host (hostname, IPv4, or IPv6) |
| `-r, --range <START> <END>` | Scan an inclusive range of ports |
| `-s, --specific <PORTS>` | Scan specific comma-separated ports |
| `--timeout <MS>` | Per-connection timeout in milliseconds (default: 2000) |
| `-c, --concurrency <N>` | Maximum concurrent connection attempts (default: 256) |

### Address scanning (`as`)

```bash
# Scan a subnet in CIDR notation (IPv4 or IPv6)
asphyxia as -s 192.168.1.0/24
asphyxia as -s 2001:db8::/120

# Scan a single IP address (IPv4 or IPv6)
asphyxia as -t 192.168.1.1
asphyxia as -t 2001:db8::1

# Scan a range of IP addresses (start end)
asphyxia as -r 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.20

# Scan a subnet with a custom timeout
asphyxia as -s 192.168.1.0/24 --timeout 300
```

| Flag | Description |
|------|-------------|
| `-s, --subnet <SUBNET>` | Scan a subnet, e.g. `192.168.1.0/24` or `2001:db8::/120` |
| `-t, --target <IP>` | Scan a single IPv4 or IPv6 address |
| `-r, --range <START> <END>` | Scan an inclusive range of IPs (start and end must share the same family) |
| `--timeout <MS>` | Per-connection timeout in milliseconds (default: 2000) |
| `-c, --concurrency <N>` | Maximum concurrent connection attempts (default: 256) |

> Host availability is inferred from a TCP probe: a host counts as up when it either accepts the connection or actively refuses it (a closed port still proves the host answered). A host that times out or is unreachable is reported as down — so a live host behind a firewall that silently drops packets may appear offline. This is an unprivileged, best-effort check, not an ICMP ping.

## Performance

Scanning is network-I/O-bound — most of the time is spent waiting for TCP handshakes and timeouts, not using the CPU. Asphyxia therefore runs many more concurrent probes than there are CPU cores (256 by default), so an unresponsive address (which blocks for the full `--timeout`) does not stall the rest of the scan.

To tune a scan:

- **`--concurrency`** — raise it to finish large subnets faster (e.g. `--concurrency 512` for a `/22`); lower it if you want a gentler scan. Capped at 1024.
- **`--timeout`** — on a responsive LAN a shorter timeout (e.g. `--timeout 500`) makes unreachable hosts give up much sooner.

For example, a `/24` with the defaults completes in roughly one timeout window instead of serially walking every address.

## Dependencies

- [clap](https://crates.io/crates/clap) — command-line argument parsing
- [rayon](https://crates.io/crates/rayon) — parallel computing
- [indicatif](https://crates.io/crates/indicatif) — progress bars and spinners
- [owo-colors](https://crates.io/crates/owo-colors) — terminal colors
- [ipnetwork](https://crates.io/crates/ipnetwork) — IP network address handling

## Development

```bash
cargo fmt --all          # format
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings   # lint
cargo test               # run unit and doc tests
```

CI runs formatting, Clippy (warnings denied), build, and tests on every pull request and push to `main`.

## License

This project is licensed under the [MIT License](LICENSE).

## Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.