What is Footprinting in cybersecurity?
Footprinting is the first step in an attack, where an attacker collects information about a target network to identify potential vulnerabilities.
What are the types of Footprinting?
Passive Footprinting: Indirect information gathering (e.g., search engines, social media).
Active Footprinting: Direct interaction with the target (e.g., DNS queries, pings).
What are some common Footprinting threats?
Social engineering, System and network attacks, Information leakage, Privacy loss, Corporate espionage, Business loss.
What is the primary goal of Footprinting?
To gather as much information as possible about a target to identify potential attack vectors.
Name popular tools used for Footprinting through search engines.
Exploit-DB (Google Hack Database - GHDB), Search engines: Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Tools: Sublist3r, theHarvester.
What are key search operators used in Google Hacking (Dorks)?
cache: Pages stored in Google's cache.
site: Results within a specific domain.
filetype: Results for a specific file extension.
allintitle: Pages with all keywords in the title.
intitle: Pages with specified keywords in the title.
allinurl: Pages with all keywords in the URL.
inurl: Pages with specified keywords in the URL.
How is Footprinting conducted using social networking sites?
Use social engineering to gather sensitive information.
Employ tools like theHarvester, Sherlock, or social-searcher.com to find user profiles and activity.
What is theHarvester used for?
TheHarvester is a tool for gathering email addresses, subdomains, IPs, and employee details from public sources such as search engines, social media, and DNS.
How does Shodan assist in reconnaissance?
Shodan identifies internet-connected devices, their operating systems, open ports, and vulnerabilities.
What are some ways to gather subdomain information?
Using dorks: site:example.com -inurl:www.
Tools: Sublist3r, Netcraft, Pentest-Tools.
What is the difference between the Deep Web and Dark Web?
Deep Web: Pages hidden from search engines but accessible with standard tools.
Dark Web: A subset of the Deep Web accessible only through specialized tools like Tor.
How can you gather email addresses during Footprinting?
Tools: theHarvester, EmailSpider.
Search techniques: Use dorks like inurl:@example.com.
What is Whois Footprinting?
Whois Footprinting gathers domain registration details, such as registrant name, organization, and contact information.
What is Website Footprinting?
It involves analyzing a website to gather:
Software and versions, Subdirectories and parameters, File paths and technologies used, Contact details and CMS info.
How can DNS Footprinting be conducted?
Use tools like DNSRecon, SecurityTrails, and nslookup.
Perform reverse lookups to identify key hosts.
Map DNS records to locate mail servers, web servers, and more.
How do traceroute tools assist in network reconnaissance?
Traceroute identifies the network path to a target host by analyzing routers and measuring latency.
Name tools for mirroring a website for offline analysis.
HTTrack, Archive.org (Wayback Machine), Photon.py.
How can competitive intelligence gathering be performed?
By analyzing open-source information, such as job postings, press releases, and product catalogs, without directly interacting with the target.
How is email Footprinting conducted?
Email Footprinting tracks communication metadata, such as:
Sender’s mail server and IP address, Time of sending and receipt, Proxy detection and geolocation.
Tools: Infoga, Emailtrackerpro.
What are some countermeasures against Footprinting?
Restrict access to social networking sites.
Configure servers to prevent information leakage.
Educate employees on security risks.
Use privacy services for Whois lookups.
Disable directory listings and zone transfers.
Opt for encryption and VPNs.
Train employees to recognize social engineering.