Footprinting
What Does Footprinting Mean?
What Does Footprinting Mean?
It refers to the process of gathering as important knowledge as possible about the target process in order to figure out how to hack into it. The maturity of an ethical hacker's time is spent assaying any association, acquiring knowledge about the host, network, and individualities associated with the company.
IP addresses, Whois data, DNS information, the zilches system employed, hand dispatch addresses, and phone figures are all collected.
Footprinting is helpful to
Know the Company's Security the information acquired will help us in determining the company's security posture, similar as the presence of a firewall, operation security setups, and so on.
Reduce Attack Zone - Can detect a limited number of systems and focus on a single target. This will drastically minimize the number of systems on which we will concentrate our efforts.
Detect attacks - It is possible to create a database of vulnerabilities, threats, and gaps in the target organization's system.
Identify weaknesses -figure a network chart of the target association's networks, including topology, trusted routers, the vacuity of waiters, and other information.
Footprinting Methodology
Various strategies were utilized to gather data on the target organization. They are
- Creating a Digital Footprint through Search Engines
This is a unresistant data collection system in which we gain information about the target from social media, search machines, and multitudinous websites. Names, particular information, geographical position details, login spots, intranet doors, and other data are gathered. Search machines may also be used to gain target specific information similar as operating system data, IP addresses, Netblock information, and web operation technologies, among other effects.
- Hacking Google:
Hackers use Google dorks (keywords) to craft search queries that reveal sensitive information.
Compromised passwords, default credentials, competitor information, knowledge on a certain topic, and other facts were obtained.
Inurl: site:,allintitle, and so forth.
- Analyzing the HTML Source and Cookies:
HTML source codes of web applications can offer insight into its workings - variables, hidden fields and the like. Cookies can also be a source of intelligence, with them being stored in browsers, sent through URLs or inserted in HTTP headers to track user sessions. To get more thorough data, we may use tools such as HTTtracker which replicates the entire website. Even taking a look at archived versions of a website may provide us with some clues.
Extract website archives: obtaining previous versions of a website may give some information about the target.
- Competitive intelligence
Competitive intelligence is the process of obtaining information on rivals from various sources, such as the Internet.
For example, a company's website, a search engine, the internet, online databases, press releases, annual reports, and trade journals are all examples of online databases.
- Google Dorks/Google Hacking
Using Google operators to search particular sequences of text within search results, this method extracts hidden information from search results.
- EmailFootprinting
Email headers contain information about the mail server, the original sender's email address, the internal IP address scheme, and the likely architecture of the target network.
- Whois Footprinting
RIR - Regional Internet Registries - manages the Whois databases and servers. Domain Owners' personal information is stored in these databases. Whois is a query response protocol that is used to query Whois databases and is specified in RFC 3912. The Whois tool queries the Internet domain name management system and returns information on a domain name's ownership, address, location, phone numbers, and other facts.
What does reconnaissance indicate?
Reconnaissance, like Footprinting, is a crucial stage in the early hacking process. Attackers gather information in this stage, much like a detective! This procedure entails obtaining data about target defects, vulnerabilities that can be leveraged in penetration testing, and the start of any data breaches.
Any information obtained about the target might be a significant piece of the puzzle in revealing the target's critical vulnerabilities.
DNS Footprinting
DNS is a computer naming system that transforms human-readable domain names to computer-readable IP addresses and back.
DNS serves queries through UDP port 53. Following that, a zone stores all information, or resource records, connected with a specific domain in a zone file; resource records returned by name servers should contain the following attributes.
Domain Name- Identification of the domain name or record owner
Record Types — defines the data type in the resource record.
Record Class-Identifying a network or protocol family in use
TTL (Time to Live) – Defines how long a record can be kept in cache before being discarded.
Record Data – Information about the resources that is type and class relevant.
A (address) is a mapping between a hostname and an IP address.
Start of Authority- the DNS server responsible for the domain information is identified by the SOA,
CNAME (canonical name)-Additional names or aliases for the address record
MX (mail exchange)—Identifies the domain's mail server.
SRV (service)—is used to identify services like directory services.
PTR (pointer) translates IP addresses into hostnames.
NS (name server)—Identifies the domain's other name servers.
Host Information Records (HINFO)
DNS servers use zone transfers to stay current with the most recent information. A zone transfer of a destination domain returns a list of all public hosts, IP addresses, and record types.
Social Engineering and Footprinting:
Various social engineering tactics are used to obtain information such as personal details, user passwords, and other sensitive information from social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. Among the approaches used are:
- Eavesdropping:The act of intercepting unlawful communications in order to collect information.
- Shoulder surfing-The goal is to gather sensitive information, such as passwords, personal information, or account information, by secretly viewing the target.
- Dumpster Diving- technique for gathering sensitive information by rummaging through the rubbish. Many documents are not destroyed before being thrown away in the garbage. These documents might contain sensitive information such as contact information, financial information, tender information, etc.
Counter-Footprinting measures include:
- Increasing staff and user awareness of the perils of social engineering
- Keeping sensitive information to a minimum
- Using privacy services on the whois lookup database to encrypt critical information
- Web servers should be configured to disable directory listings.
- Deactivate directory listings in the web servers
- Applying security policies
So join us to learn Footprinting.
Conclusion
The pre-attack phase of hacking is reconnaissance, which involves obtaining information, scanning, and mapping the network. You have to know what you're attacking and how to go about it in order to have a chance at success. If you do your due diligence in the beginning, you'll increase your chances of not getting hacked and keeping your data safe from attackers.
The more information a hacker can obtain, the better their chances of succeeding in their assault. If you strengthen your security from the start, you will lower the chances of an attacker breaking into your system. You can improve your security posture and keep your data safe from hackers by managing your digital footprint.