What is information gathering
The steps involved in information gathering footprinting and scanning are critical. Effective information gathering can mean the difference between a hack that succeeds and one that fails to benefit the client to the fullest. The majority of businesses today have a staggering amount of information available about them. This information is available from a variety of sources, including the company website, trade magazines, Usenet, financial databases, and even disgruntled employees. Before discussing some potential sources, let's take a look at the supporting evidence.
Two categories of information gathering methods can be distinguished:
Hackers actively gather information about their target by scanning open ports on a specific target, compiling a list of services that are active, and learning the operating system being used. These methods generate a lot of noise at the receiving end, making them simple targets for IDS, IPS, and firewall detection. It is not always advisable.
Search engines, social media, and other websites can be used to passively gather information about a target without engaging that target directly. Since no log of presence on the target system is produced, it is typically advised. Social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and others are used to gather data on employees and their interests that will be useful during client-side attacks on the employees, such as phishing, keylogging, browser exploitation, and other forms of client-side attack.
How to information gathering for beginners
Information can be gathered from a variety of sources, such as social media websites, search engines, forums, press releases, people search engines, and job sites. Seven logical steps can be taken in order to gather information:
- discover new information
- the network range, find it
- Check for active machines
- Identify available ports and access points
- operating systems to be aware of
- Identify services on ports
- The Network Map
How to detect information gathering tutorial
The first two phases of fingerprinting are used to gather preliminary data and identify the network range. Gathering information about a target from publicly accessible sources, such as URLs, DNS tables, and domain names, is a relatively simple and legal process known as "open source footprinting." Links, comments, and Meta tags can be found by looking at the HTML source code of the website. General information about the target, employee and business information, newsgroup information (such as posts about computer systems), links to business and individual web sites, and HTML source code are just a few examples of the information that can be found from open sources.
How to work with information gathering
The network architecture, server, and application types used to store important data should be identified using the information gathered during the footprinting phase. The operating system and version as well as the different application types must be identified before an attack or exploit can be launched in order to launch the most efficient attack against the target. Domain names, network blocks, network services, and applications, system architecture, intrusion detection systems, authentication techniques, particular IP addresses, access control techniques, contact information, and phone numbers are among the details typically gathered during footprinting. It is possible to gain a better understanding of the company, where important information is kept, and how to access it after compiling this information.
information gathering example
The attacker might decide to get the data from:
- A Web page, Yahoo!, or other directories (save it offline, for example, using an offline browser like Teleport Pro, which can be downloaded at http://www.tenmax.com/teleport/pro/home.htm). (Tifny is a thorough USENET newsgroup search tool. By keeping track of previous usage and utilities, the programme can enhance the quality of the experience.)
- Without using a tool, you can search through numerous newsgroup archives using multiple search engines (All-in-One, Dogpile, and groups.google.com).
- using advanced search on websites (like AltaVista, where vulnerable sites can be found via reverse links).
- Look up publicly traded companies using EDGAR, for instance.
