Fundamentals of Reconnaissance

As an aspiring ethical hacker, penetration tester, or red teamer, reconnaissance plays an important role in helping cybersecurity professionals reduce organizations’ digital footprint on the internet. These digital footprints enable adversaries such as hackers to leverage publicly available information about a target to plan future operations and cyber-attacks. As more organizations and users are connecting their systems and networks to the largest network infrastructure in the world, the internet, access to information and the sharing of resources are readily available to everyone. The internet has provided the platform for many organizations to extend their products and services beyond traditional borders to potential and new customers around the world. Furthermore, people are using the internet to enroll and attend online classes, perform e-commerce transactions, operate online businesses, and communicate and share ideas with others.

Nowadays, using the internet is very common for many people. For instance, if an organization is looking to hire an employee to fill a new or existing role, the recruiter simply posts the job vacancy with all the necessary details that are needed for an interested candidate. This enables anyone with internet access to visit various job forums and recruiting websites to seek new career opportunities and easily submit an application via the online platform. Information that’s posted and available online enables adversaries to collect and leverage specific details about the targeted organization. Such details help hackers to determine the type of network infrastructure, systems, and services that are running on the internal network of a company without breaking in. This book will teach you all about how threat actors and ethical hackers are able to leverage publicly available information in planning future operations that lead to a cyber-attack.

During the course of this chapter, you will gain a solid understanding of the importance of reconnaissance from both an adversary and cybersecurity professional’s perspective, and why organizations need to be mindful when connecting their systems and network to the internet. Furthermore, you will learn the fundamentals of attack surface management, why it’s important to organizations, and how cybersecurity professionals use it to reduce the risk of a possible cyber-attack on their networks. Lastly, you will discover the tactics, techniques, and procedures that are commonly used by threat actors, adversaries, ethical hackers, and penetration testers during the reconnaissance phase of an attack.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• What is ethical hacking?
• Importance of reconnaissance
• Understanding attack surface management
• Reconnaissance tactics, techniques, and procedures

Let’s dive in!