Goals of Footprinting in hacking 2

Operating system information

One of the must critical part of any system is the Operating System, commonly known as OS. Operating system is the system which serves as an interface between the device and the user. Hacker or Ethical hacker needs to have information regarding the target system OS.

Below are the information that needs to gathered:-

• User and group information and names
• Banner grabbing
• Routing tables
• SNMP (Simple network management protocol): This protocol deals with maintenance and operation of the network. It again aids in exchange of information between network devices.

• System architecture
• Remote system data
• System names
• Passwords

Organizational data

This are non technical data regarding the organization. As I already mentioned before, one of the simplest way to hack an organization is getting access to non-technical staff. Extracting of information from such insider is very simple. Again non-technical staffs always use weak passwords like date of birth, names etc.

Non-technical data can play a vital roll in the footprinting process.

Below are the main target in organizational data footprinting:-

• Employee details
• Organization’s website
• Company directory
• Location details
• Address and phone numbers
• Comments in HTML source code
• Security policies implemented
• Web server links relevant to the organization
• Background of the organization
• News articles and press releases

Reference:  Sybex CEH

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