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Application & OT Security · Foundational

Active Reconnaissance

Gathering information by directly interacting with target systems, such as scanning or probing services.

Definition

Active recon includes ping sweeps, port scans, banner grabbing and DNS zone transfer attempts against target servers. It produces more accurate, current data but can be logged and detected by IDS. It requires authorization.

Example

Running nmap -sV against a target subnet to identify service versions.

Exam tip

Port scanning is active recon and needs authorization; WHOIS lookups are passive.

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