With all the information that was received from the scoping meeting, it is now time to not only validate that information, but also learn as much as you can from your own information gathering research. The goal is to gain as much knowledge as possible about the network and systems before starting to scan for vulnerabilities and then exploiting them.
In this chapter, you will learn to use various tools to start and map out the network and systems and then enumerate your findings. The more information you can get from this phase, the easier it will be to find vulnerabilities and exploits. This step can save you a lot of time later in the lab. For example, if you learn that a web server is a Microsoft Windows 2012 server, you can utilize this information for a better understanding of how to approach the exploitation phase. Without this information, you may...
