Scan engine hangs / becomes extremely slow on large CIDR ranges with high parallel-module-scan
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- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
Bug Description
When scanning large IPv4 ranges (e.g. /16, /20) with high --parallel-module-scan values, the scan engine becomes unstable.
Observed behavior
- Scans that should finish in minutes take hours or appear to hang indefinitely
- Engine appears frozen with no visible progress updates
- High CPU usage with low actual scanning throughput
- Some targets in the range are skipped or not fully scanned
Steps to Reproduce
poetry run nettacker -i 192.168.0.0/20 -m port_scan -t 100 --parallel-module-scan 50
# or
poetry run nettacker -l targets.txt -m subdomain_scan,port_scan --parallel-module-scan 75
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start by running the provided Poetry commands with the /20 range and high --parallel-module-scan values, then compare completion time, progress output, CPU usage, and target coverage. Done means these scans complete without appearing to hang, maintain useful throughput, show progress, and fully scan the targets.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- networking, security
- Issue type
- Bug
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Needs clarification
- Newbie friendliness
- 35/100