What does the -n option do in Nmap?

• A. It tells Nmap to never do reverse DNS resolution on active IP addresses
• B. Enables traceroute
• C. Reads target list from a file
• D. Excludes specified IPs

Answer: (A)

The main idea here is how Nmap handles DNS lookups during a scan. The -n option means no DNS resolution. Nmap will not perform any DNS lookups, so it scans using the IPs you provide and will display those IPs in the results instead of trying to map them to hostnames. This speeds up scans and reduces DNS traffic, which is useful when scanning large numbers of hosts or when DNS connectivity is unreliable. If you give hostnames as targets, -n would prevent those hostnames from being resolved, so you’d need to supply IPs or omit -n to allow resolution. This option is different from reading targets from a file, enabling traceroute, or excluding IPs, which are separate features.