Active Reconnaissance of External and Internal Networks

Active reconnaissance is the art of collecting information directly from a target. The purpose of this phase is to collect and weaponize information about the target to the greatest degree possible to facilitate the exploitation phase of the kill chain methodology. We saw in the last chapter how to perform passive reconnaissance using OSINT, which is almost undetectable and can yield a significant amount of information about the target organization and its users. This phase builds on the results obtained from OSINT and passive reconnaissance and emphasizes more focused probing to identify the path to, and the attack surface of, a target. In general, complex systems have a greater attack surface, and each surface may be exploited and then leveraged to support additional attacks.

Although active reconnaissance produces more useful information, interactions with the target system may be logged, triggering alarms by protective...