Introduction

The most important process during a penetration test is the information gathering phase. During this process we investigate our target with the goal of learning everything about it. The information we discover could be invaluable in further stages of our penetration test. During this process we gather information such as usernames, possible passwords, additional hosts and services, or even version banners, among many other interesting bits of data.

There are several tools that help us retrieve information about our target, using many different sources. Our success comes from using all available resources. Dare to ignore or neglect any of them and you could be missing out on the one piece of information that you need to completely compromise your target.

Nmap is well known for its information-gathering capabilities such as OS fingerprinting, port enumeration, and service discovery, but thanks to the Nmap Scripting Engine, it is now possible to perform several new information-gathering...