CEH Practical: Gathering Target Information: Reconnaissance and Competitive Intelligence

CEH Exam Objectives:

Describe Reconnaissance. 

Describe aggressive/competitive intelligence.

Reconnaissance

 Reconnaissance is the process of gathering informative data about a particular target of a malicious hack by exploring the targeted system. Basically two types of Reconnaissance exist i.e. Active and Passive. Active reconnaissance typically related to port scanning and observing the vulnerabilities about the targeted system (i.e., which ports are left vulnerable and/or if there are ways around the firewall and routers). Passive reconnaissance typically you will not be directly connected to a computer system. This process is used to gather essential information without ever interacting with the target systems.

Understand Aggressive Intelligence 

Competitive intelligence means information gathering about competitors’ products, marketing, and technologies. Most competitive intelligence is non intrusive 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.

Online tools to gather competitive intelligence

Exercise 1.1

Using KeywordSpy 

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

• Go to the www.keywordspy.com website and enter the website address of the target in the search field 

• Review the report and determine valuable keywords, links, or other information.

 

Exercise 1.2

Using spyfu

• Go to your browser and type www.spyfu.com and enter the website address of the target in the search field.
  

Exercise 1.3

Using the EDGAR Database to Gather Information

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.