Reconnaissance is the information-gathering phase. It's the longest phase—sometimes taking weeks or months. The attacker learns everything about the target before launching a single packet. In ethical hacking, we call this "footprinting."
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RECONNAISSANCE
Reconnaissance is probably the longest phase, sometimes lasting weeks or months. The black hat uses a variety of sources to learn as much as possible about the target business and how it operates.
⏱️ CAN LAST WEEKS OR MONTHS
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Internet Searches
Google, social media, company websites
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Social Engineering
Manipulating people for information
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Dumpster Diving
Retrieving discarded documents
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Domain Management
WHOIS lookups, DNS interrogation
Key Point: Non-intrusive scanning - no direct interaction with target systems yet.