Network Attacks and Defenses

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Chapter 6

Reconnaissance Traffic

6.1   Introduction

Every attacker does a study of the targeted environment prior

to an exploit. The attacker collects some preliminary informa-

tion such as the number of systems, the configurations of the

systems, and the operating systems (OSs) that are used. All

the information gathered builds a clear picture of the environ-

ment that is targeted. Retrospectively, it is therefore extremely

important for an organization to know what information an

attacker can acquire about itself and secure it so as to mini-

mize the potential loss of this critical information.

Attackers use various tools to get information abo ...