Scanning

The second phase of hacking is the scanning phase. As discussed in Chapter 2, Understanding the Phases of the Pentesting Process, the scanning phase helps a penetration tester to obtain a lot of details about the target system and/or the network. Some of the information that may be acquired includes operating systems and build number, open and closed service ports, running applications and their service versions, and whether a particular vulnerability exists on a system or group of devices.

However, the process of scanning would involve our machine directly interacting with the target system or network. As an aspiring penetration tester, it's a good practice to be very stealthy and avoid being detected by the target’s security system as much as possible.

During a penetration test on a client’s network infrastructure, the client organization may have a blue team that is actively monitoring the security landscape. If you’re executing covert testing and you get detected during the early...