Working with Active Reconnaissance

The more information known about a target, the more ethical hackers are able to identify security vulnerabilities, which can be exploited to get unauthorized access to the systems and networks of organizations. Active reconnaissance helps ethical hackers and penetration testers to collect and analyze information about a target that’s not accessible or available during passive reconnaissance. Since passive reconnaissance relies on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and publicly available information from multiple online sources, the information may not be up to date, and inaccuracy affects planning future operations such as weaponization and exploitation of the target. With active reconnaissance, ethical hackers collect data in real time to better identify security vulnerabilities.

In this chapter, you will learn how to efficiently scan hosts on a network to identify their operating systems, open ports, and running services using automated...