Hacker Techniques, Tools, and Incident Handling, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER
6	Port Scanning

FOOTPRINTING IS A PROCESS that passively gathers information about a target from many diverse sources. The goal of footprinting is to learn about a target system prior to launching an attack. If footprinting is performed patiently and thoroughly, a very detailed picture of a victim can be achieved, but that still leaves this question: What’s next? If all this information is gathered up, organized, and placed before the attacker, how can it be acted upon? This next step, port scanning, is an active process that gathers information in more detail than footprinting can.

After the target has been analyzed and all relevant information organized, port scanning can take place. The goal of performing port scanning is ...