What is footprinting? How it can be done | ETHICAL HACKING

FOOTPRINTING

Hello guys , Welcome again to my another post which is about footprinting. Initially i have a question from you ,What do you understand by the term footprinting ? Footprinting is a process of finding or fetching information about individual or a company. It is a very important phase in ethical hacking. In this process , hacker have to find the information or details as much as possible about th e target system or an individual. An ethical hacker spend most of his time in gathering information about the target. Because he need to be sure and complete about every single riddle in his path.

Unethical or black hat hackers do it without permission and for their personal reasons or for earning money. This step is most important step in ethical hacking because it will lead the hacker to his destination with some sensitive information about the target.If you have ever searched about anything on google or any web search engine then you must know that there is so much information present out there. Some of the important points are:

1. Target IP address

2. Network basics

3. Legal details

4. Documentations

5. Sensitive information about target

Information such as ip address, Whois records, DNS information, an operating system used, employee email id, Phone numbers etc is collected.

 There are two types of footprinting 

1. Active footprinting : It is a type of footprinting in which hacker perform footprinting by sending a infected file or an email to the target in order to get his information.

2. Passive footprinting : It is a type of footprinting in which hacker perform it through third party sites or applications like searching about the company over internet.

Footprinting helps to some points mentioned below :

SECURITY ESTIMATE : The data gathering helps us to know about the security of the target system or an organization such as presence of firewall in their system .

TARGET CONCENTRATION : This is done to check whether the hack is performed only on target not on other systems.This will reduce the focusing of system for the hackers.

IDENTIFY VULNERABILITIES – we can build an information database containing the vulnerabilities, threats, loopholes available in the system of the target organization.

FOOTPRINTING METHODOLGY

There are many ways to perform footprinting and can be done with some research. We have many applications and sites that helps us to perform footprinting. Some of them are mentioned below :

1.  SEARCH ENGINES : This is a passive type of footprinting where we get the information through social media , search engines , blogs , websites etc. The information which is gathered is like target's name , address, phone number , email address, Ip details , geographical location , login credentials , passwords etc. It is a very lengthy way and time consuming way but good information is gathered through this. Some hackers try to know about target's Operating systems, applications, vulnerable applcation installed etc.

2.  WHOIS footprinting : This is also a passive type of footprinting and it is done by visiting the website whois.com . It is a website where you can search the domain details . Whois databases and the servers  are operated by RIR - Regional Internet Registries.  These databases contains the information about the Domain Owners. It returns much information about the owner which includes phone numbers, address, location etc.

3.  Footprinting through social engineering : This is an active type of footprinting which is done by the hacker directly tothe target . It includes some points which will explain it very nicely that you may understand easily.

   1. Shoulder surfing : You can guess by its name , it is the process in which the hacker secretly observing the target. He focus on his activities and habits in order to gather the information.

   2. Dumpster diving : It is a process in which hacker try to find some information about the target by searching his trash bin or waste paper. Retrieving these documents may result in very good information about the target. 

   3. Eavesdropping : It is the process in which the hacker starts unauthorized communication with the target to get the desired information. It can be done through the fake calls made by him , fake emails , fake messages , phishing methods etc.

    

   Thank you for reading . STAY SAFE

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