Understanding active information gathering

Active information gathering uses a direct approach to engage with our target; it involves actually making a connection between our machine and the target network and systems. By performing active information gathering, we are able to gather specific and detailed data such as live hosts, running services and application versions, network file shares, and user account information.

Performing active information gathering does pose a risk of detection.

Determining live hosts will give us an idea of the number of devices that are online. It doesn't make sense to target an offline device as it would be unresponsive. Knowing the operating system and running services on a target helps us to understand the role of that device in the network and the resources it provides to its clients.

For example, if we were to find lots of file shares...