Metasploit Revealed: Secrets of the Expert Pentester

Gathering intelligence

As discussed earlier, the gathering intelligence phase revolves around gathering as much information as possible, about the target. Active and passive scans, which include port scanning, banner grabbing, and various other scans, depends upon the type of target that is under test. The target under the current scenario is a single IP address. So here, we can skip gathering passive information and can continue with the active information-gathering methodology.

Let's start with the internal footprinting phase, which includes port scanning, banner grabbing, ping scans to check whether the system is live or not, and service detection scans.

To conduct internal footprinting, NMAP proves as one of the finest available tools. ...