Reconnaissance is a term used by defense forces, and it means obtaining information about the enemy in a way that does not alert them. The same concept is applied by attackers and penetration testers to obtain information related to the target. Information gathering is the main goal of reconnaissance. Any information gathered at this initial stage is considered important. The attacker working with malicious content builds on the information learned during the reconnaissance stage and gradually moves ahead with the exploitation. A small bit of information that appears innocuous may help you in highlighting a severe flaw in the later stages of the test. A valuable skill for a penetration tester is to be able to chain together vulnerabilities that may be low risk by themselves, but that represent a high impact if assembled.
The aim of reconnaissance in a penetration...
