Footprinting
Footprinting is the technique of gathering information about computer systems and the entities they belong to. This is done by employing various computer security techniques, as:
- DNS queries
- Network enumeration
- Network queries
- Operating system identification
- Organizational queries
- Ping sweeps
- Point of contact queries
- Port Scanning
- Registrar queries (WHOIS queries)
- SNMP queries
- World Wide Web spidering
When used in the computer security lexicon, "Footprinting" generally refers to one of the pre-attack phases; tasks performed prior to doing the actual attack. Some of the tools used for footprinting are Sam Spade, nslookup, traceroute, Nmap and neotrace.
Introduction
Footprinting is when information about a particular computer, and its related users and systems, is gathered together. To get this information, a hacker might use various tools and technologies. This information is very useful to a hacker who is trying to crack a whole system – not just an email account or a bank accounty finding out everything a system does and has on it, the hacker can become an extremely powerful attacker.
Uses of Footprinting
It allows a hacker to get complete access to all your information. A hacker would start with basic information from your website – such as names, email addresses and so
Crawling
Crawling is the process of surfing the internet to get the required information about the target. The sites surfed can include the target’s website, blogs and social networks. The information obtained by this method will be helpful in other methods too.
Whois
WHOIS[1] is a web application used to get information about the target website, such as the administrator's e-mail address and details about the registration. WHOIS is a very large database and contains information of approximately all the websites. It can be searched by domain name.
Search engines
Search engines such as Google can also be used to gather information about the target system. It depends on how well one knows how to use search engines to collect information. If used properly, the attacker can gather lots of information about a company, its career and its policies etc.
Tracert
Information can also be gathered using the command Tracert ("trace route"), which is used to trace a path between a user and the target system on the networks. That way it becomes clear where a request is being forwarded and through which devices. In Linux systems, the tracepath and traceroute commands are also available for doing traceroute operations.
Sns
SNS stands for Social Networking Sites. SNS can be used for footprinting. One method is to compile a list of employees working under the target organization and to look for their details which can again give information about the type and number of staff, systems and security measures which are installed. Websites such as Linkedin, Twitter etc. can be used to gather more information about the target. On the basis of the information gathered social networking can also be performed.