Reconnaissance

Information gathering (Reconnaissance) is the initial stage of any penetration test and one of the most important phase.

• It involves finding out as much information as possible about a targeted individual, website, company or system.

• The more information a pentester has on a target, the more successful and easier the latter stages of a pentest will be. It depends on the scope of the penetration test too.

• E.g.1 - Pentest on a Website: web technology, vulnerabilities, IP address of the hosting server.

• E.g.2 - Pentest on a public facing assets and some internal systems, there can be more attack vectors:

  • gain access to the internal network through the public facing web server (one access vector)

  • during the info-gathering phase, learn more about the company employees (names, email addresses, credentials), getting this important information (useful for exploitation or initial access) by using phishing attacks, malicious attachments via email (another access vector)