Now, the main idea behind this skill is also preparatory for the entirety of
the course.
We're going to be running through those five phases of pen testing, identifying
them to the
actual life cycle itself of pen testing overall, and get into a brief overview
of what each of
those phases is and does for us as being able to actually conduct a proper pen
test against an
organization that we've been hired for. So let's go. One of the most important
things to remember,
be it reconnaissance or any other phase all throughout the pen testing life
cycle,
is the difference between active and passive.
When we passively do our reconnaissance, we're trying to be as discrete as
possible and keep our
footprints down to a bare minimum. Now we're talking about public records and
anything that we can
see from outside physically. We talked about in the last skill where sometimes
we may not be pen
testing on site. We may be remotely or geo dislocated and that's okay too,
because then we could use
things like Google Maps and other resources, county Cads and all this other
great stuff to be able
to assist us in scoping out, let's say physical security, our street view for
any kind of security
systems around the building itself or public records like phone books. I know
some of you out
there may not know what that is, but that's okay. But basically a public and
open search that
anybody at any time could feasibly do on their own. So that way we're blending
in with the rest
of the crowd and traffic to and out of the organization versus an active
approach.
Is there anybody in there? Now it should be pretty obvious which one attracts
more attention and
that's why whenever we go throughout the pen testing life cycle and all the
different phases
there within, we want to make sure that we keep the idea of active and passive
in mind.
Now there's going to be a skill or two coming up amount active and passive
scanning and reconnaissance
that goes into way more detail, but I kind of wanted to point those out because
with every phase
of pen testing, this is something that we have to keep in mind as well. It may
not seem as
a big a deal when it comes to things like reporting, but that's where we're
actually
reporting and showing our findings of those active and passive scans.