Lab Exercise 1: Footprinting and Reconnaissance: Footprinting A Target Network
Lab Exercise 1: Footprinting and Reconnaissance: Footprinting A Target Network
Types of OS, network topologies, firewalls (hardware or software), remote access (SSH or VPN)
Task 1: Open Source Information Gathering using Windows Command line Utilities
1. Find IP address for http://www.certifiedhacker.com
2. Run cmd and ping www.certifiedhacker.com in command prompt
3. Note down the websites IP. You may also get information on Ping Statistics (packets sent,
packets received, packets lost and Approximate round up time)
4. Now find the max frame size on network. In cmd type ping www.certifiedhacker.com f l 1500
and then 1300. Observer the max packet size is less than 1500 but more than 1300. Now try
different values until you find the max frame size. (Hint: size is in between 1460-1480)
5. (The frame size will differ depending upon the target network)
6. Now find out when TTL expires. Every frame on the network has TTL defined. If TTl reaches 0,
the router discards the packet. In cmd type ping www.certifiedhacker.com i 3 (this sets TTL to
3, max you can set it to 255)
7. We will now use the ping command to emulate a traceroute
8. Find traceroute from your PC to www.certifiedhacker.com using the tracert command (tracert
www.certifiedhacker.com )
9. Minimize the cmd above and launch a new cmd and type ping www.certifiedhacker.com i 2 n
1. The only difference is that we are setting the TTL to two in an attempt to check the lifespan
on the packet.
10. Then again change TTL to 3,4,515 and observer the difference in packet loss, until the reply
from destination host from ping and tracert are same.
11. Make a note of all IP addresses from which you receive the reply during the ping to emulate the
tracert.
12. Launch a new command prompt, type nslookup. In interactive mode, type set type=a. This
configures nslookup to query for the IP address of a given domain.
13. Type the target domain www.certifiedhacker.com . This resolves the IP address and displays the
result.
14. The first two lines in the result specifies the default server hosted on the local machine. If the
response is coming from your local machines server but not the server that legitimately hosts
the domain www.certifiedhacker.com , it is considered to be a non-authoritative answer. You
need to obtain the domains authoritative name server.
15. Type set type=cname
16. The CNAME lookup is done directly against the domains authoritative name server and lists the
CNAME record for a domain.
17. This returns the domains authoritative name server, along with the mail server address.
18. Now that you have obtained the authoritative name server, now determine the IP address of
the name server. Issue the command set type=a and type the primary name server that is
displayed in the step above.
19. The authoritative name server stores the records associated with the domain. So, if an attacker
can determine the authoritative name server (primary name server) and obtain its associated IP
address, he/she might attempt to exploit the server to perform attacks which include DoS,
DDoS, URL Redirection and so on.
Document all IP addresses, reply request IP addresses, TTLs, DNS server names and other DNS
information.
Analyze and document all the results discovered in the lab exercise.
Collect information like internal URLs, cookie details, directory structure, session IDs etc for different
websites using Firebug.