Summary
In this chapter, we explored footprinting and reconnaissance by showing how these are essential parts of the hacker and ethical hacker toolkit. We saw how simple tools such as Google searches can garner a great deal of information. This information is publicly available and, as such, defenders of these networks may not be aware of how much information is out there if they don’t check themselves.
This chapter also introduced you to some of the information-gathering tools that are part of your Kali installation, including SpiderFoot and Dmitry. These are not the only tools available to you for reconnaissance but it is the first step in finding the tools and techniques that you will employ on your own engagements.
In the next chapter, we are going to move away from passive reconnaissance to more offensive scanning and enumeration, where we directly access devices, services, and assets, looking for services and vulnerabilities as well as collecting information through...
