Exploring active scanning techniques
As an upcoming ethical hacker and penetration tester, you must understand how to leverage the power of various scanning techniques and tools to efficiently discover the host systems on your target network. Many organizations focus on securing their perimeter network and sometimes do not apply equal focus on securing their internal network. Quite often, you will discover that over 90% of a cyberattack or threat usually originates from the inside network. Due to this, many organizations think the attacker will launch their attack from the internet, which will then be blocked by their network-based firewall.
The following diagram shows a simplified overview of a typical deployment of a firewall:
Figure 5.31 – Network-based firewall
As shown in the preceding snippet, the network-based firewall will filter traffic between networks such as the internal corporate network and the internet. However, threat actors are continuously...
