What is the risk of using higher timing values (-T) in Nmap scans?

• A. Higher -T values increase speed but sacrifice stealth.
• B. Higher -T values decrease speed but improve stealth.
• C. They block the scan entirely.
• D. They make scans completely stealthy.

Answer: (A)

Raising the timing value in Nmap speeds up the probe rate. Higher timing templates push probes out faster, reduce the idle wait between steps, and increase parallelism. That speed comes at a cost: the scan becomes louder on the network, making it more likely to be noticed by IDS/IPS, firewalls, or admins, and it can trigger rate limiting or blocking. So you gain speed but sacrifice stealth. The other options aren’t correct because higher timing doesn’t block scans entirely, nor does it make scans completely stealthy; it actually reduces stealth by increasing detectability.