Chapter 4: Reconnaissance and Footprinting

As an aspiring ethical hacker and penetration tester, it's vital to understand the importance of gathering information about your target. As many of us would want to create a weapon (exploit) to take advantage of a security weakness (vulnerability) on a target system, network, or organization, we must understand the attack surface of our desired target. The more information we know about the target, the more knowledge we will have about how to compromise their systems. This is the mindset of a threat actor that develops over time. If you can think like a hacker and compromise a system as an ethical hacker or penetration tester, so can a real hacker. This is why we must perform penetration testing techniques on an organization – to quickly discover security flaws and implement countermeasures to prevent a real cyber attack from occurring in the future.

In this chapter, you will begin your journey by understanding the importance...