Hacking Exposed 7, 7th Edition

CHAPTER 3ENUMERATION

Now that an attacker has successfully identified live hosts and running services using the techniques discussed in Chapter 2, he will typically turn next to probing the identified services more fully for known weaknesses, a process we call enumeration. It is also worth noting that, as an attacker progresses through later stages of the attack and obtains connectivity to hosts and segments he previously did not have access to, he will often return to this phase to find ways to greatly expand his foothold and work toward specific targets.

The key difference between the previously discussed information-gathering techniques and enumeration is in the level of intrusiveness. Enumeration involves active connections to systems and ...