In an Nmap scan, what is the effect of the -oX option?

• A. It prints the scan results to stdout only.
• B. It enables OS detection.
• C. It performs a decoy scan.
• D. It directs XML output to the given filename.

Answer: (D)

Nmap can output results in different formats, and XML is a structured, machine-readable format. The -oX option tells Nmap to produce its output in XML. When you provide a filename after -oX, Nmap writes that XML to that file, making it easy to parse with scripts or import into other tools. If you wanted the XML on the screen instead, you could use -oX - to print to stdout. This option is specifically about choosing XML, whereas other output options produce plain text or other formats.