Reconnaissance

The term reconnaissance comes from the military and means to actively seek an enemy's intentions by collecting and gathering information about an enemy's composition and capabilities via direct observation, usually by scouts or military intelligence personnel trained in surveillance. In the world of ethical hacking, reconnaissance applies to the process of information gathering. Reconnaissance is a catchall term for watching the hacking target and gathering information about how, when, and where they do things. By identifying patterns of behavior, of people or systems, an enemy could find and exploit a loophole.

Real World Scenario: Using Reconnaissance to Gain Physical Access

Every weekday at 3 p.m. the Federal Express driver stops at the loading dock of a building where the offices of Medical Associates, Inc. are located. When the driver backs the truck up to the rear door of the building, he presses the buzzer and lets the security guard know he is at the door. Because the building's security personnel recognize the driver—as he comes to the door every day around the same time for pickup and drop-off—they remotely unlock the door and allow the driver to enter. A hacker is watching this process from a car in the parking lot and takes note of the procedure to gain physical entry into the building.

The next day, the hacker carries a large cardboard box toward the door just as the Federal Express driver has been given entry to the building. The driver naturally holds the door for the hacker because he is carrying what appears to be a heavy, large box. They exchange pleasantries and the hacker heads for the elevator up to Medical Associates' offices. The hacker leaves the box in the hallway of the building as he heads to his target office.

Once he reaches the front desk of the Medical Associates office, he asks to speak with the office manager whose name he previously looked up on the company website. The receptionist leaves her desk to go get the office manager, and the hacker reaches over the desk and plugs a USB drive containing hacking tools into the back of her computer. Because the computer is not locked with a password, he double-clicks on the USB drive icon and it silently installs the hacking software on the receptionist's computer. He removes the USB drive and quickly exits the office suite and building undetected.

This is an example of how reconnaissance and understanding the pattern of people's behavior can enable a hacker to gain physical access to a target—in this case the Medical Associates network via a Trojaned system—and circumvent security checkpoints.

Understanding Competitive Intelligence

Competitive intelligence means information gathering about competitors' products, marketing, and technologies. Most competitive intelligence is nonintrusive to the company being investigated and is benign in nature—it's used for product comparison or as a sales and marketing tactic to better understand how competitors are positioning their products or services. Several tools exist for the purpose of competitive intelligence gathering and can be used by hackers to gather information about a potential target.

In Exercise 1 through 3, I will show you how to use the SpyFu and KeywordSpy online tools to gather information about a target website. SpyFu and KeywordSpy will give keywords for websites. This allows you to perform some information gathering regarding a website. I use these two tools because they are easy to use and completely passive, meaning a potential target could not detect the information gathering.

Exercise 1: Using SpyFu

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To use the SpyFu online tool to gather competitive intelligence information:

1. Go to the www.spyfu.com website and enter the website address of the target in the search field:
   
2. Review the report and determine valuable keywords, links, or other information.

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Exercise 2: Using KeywordSpy

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To use the KeywordSpy online tool to gather competitive intelligence information:

1. Go to the www.keywordspy.com website and enter the website address of the target in the search field:
   
2. Review the report and determine valuable keywords, links, or other information.

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Another useful tool to perform competitive intelligence and information gathering is the EDGAR database. This is a database of all the SEC filings for public companies. Information can be gathered by reviewing the SEC filings for contact names and addresses. In Exercise 3 I will show you how to use the EDGAR database for gathering information on potential targets.

Exercise 3: Using the EDGAR Database to Gather Information

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1. Determine the company's stock symbol using Google.
2. Open a web browser to www.sec.gov.
3. On the right side of the page, click the link EDGAR Filers.
   
4. Click the Search For Filings menu and enter the company name or stock symbol to search the filings for information. You can learn, for example, where the company is registered and who reported the filing.
5. Use the Yahoo! yellow pages (http://yp.yahoo.com) to see if an address or phone number is listed for any of the employee names you have located.
6. Use Google Groups and job-posting websites to search on the names you have found. Are there any IT jobs posted or other information in the newsgroups that would indicate the type of network or systems the organization has?
   The website www.Netcraft.com is another good source for passive information gathering. The website will attempt to determine the operating system and web server version running on a web server.