Footprinting

• The information-gathering steps of footprinting and scanning are of utmost importance. Good information gathering can make the difference between a successful pen test and one that has failed to provide maximum benefit to the client.
• The wayback machine located at www.archive.org can be used to browse archived web pages dating back to 1996. It's a useful tool for looking for information no longer on a site.
• One method to reduce the information leakage from job postings is to reduce the system specific information in the job post or to use a company confidential job posting.

  Table FF.1. DNS Records and Types

  Record Name	Record Type	Purpose
  Host	A	Maps a domain name to an IP address
  Pointer	PTR	Maps an IP address to a domain name
  Name Server	NS	Configures settings for zone transfers and record caching
  Start of Authority	SOA	Configures settings for zone transfers and record caching
  Service Locator	SRV	Used to locate services in the network
  Mail	MX	Used to identify SMTP servers

• A zone transfer is unlike a normal lookup in that the user is attempting to retrieve a copy of the entire zone file for a domain from a DNS server.
• Traceroute is a utility that is used to determine the path to a target computer.

Scanning