Footprinting and Reconnaissance- Introduction

I have mentioned Hacking Phases in my previous article. It was just a basic information on the stages. Now, we are going to discuss the full tutorials in detail along with the tools required to perform these steps. So, let’s start.

Footprinting is the process of collecting as much as information as possible about the target network, for identifying various ways to intrude (enter without invitation) into an organisation’s network system.

Footprinting is the first step of any attack on information systems; attacker gathers publicly available sensitive information, using which he/she performs social engineering, system and network attacks, etc.

Advantages of footprinting :

• Know Security Posture : It allows attackers to get an idea of the external condition of security of the target organization.
• Reduce Focus Area : It reduces attacker’s focus area to specific range of IP address, networks, domain names, etc.
• Identify Vulnerabilities : It allows attackers to identify defects in the target systems in order to select appropriate exploits.
• Draw Network Map : It allows attackers to draw an outline of the target organisation’s network infrastructure and the path (sequence of IPs) to reach the target server; to know more about the actual environment that they are going to break.

Objectives of Footprinting :-

1. Collect Network Information :
• Domain name
• IP addresses of reachable systems
• Rouge/Private websites
• TCP and UDP services running
• Network protocols
• VPN points
2. Collect System Information :
• Remote system type
• User and group names
• Routing tables
• System architecture
• System names
• Passwords
  
3. Collect Organisation's Information : 
• Employee details
• Organisation’s website
• Location details
• Address and phone numbers
• Comments in HTML source code
• Security Policies implemented
• Other organisations connected