I Know What You Did Last Summer!

The longer the hacker spends collecting data about people and systems within the company, the more likely he or she is to succeed.

In the reconnaissance phase of an attack, hackers identify a vulnerable target and explore how to exploit it. The initial target can be anyone within the organization. They only need a single entry point to get started using targeted phishing emails to spread malware. 

Getting to Know the Target is the Whole Point

During this stage of the attack, hackers want to know who the key people in the target company are, who they do business with, and what data is publicly available. 

For researching key individuals in organizations, companies’ websites and online contact resources like LinkedIn are obvious sources. Identifying suppliers and customers may require ‘social engineering,’ where hackers make bogus calls to companies. 

In addition to publicly available data, hackers collect Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and run scans to determine the type of hardware and software being used by the target company and checking ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) web registry databases.

All this gathered information is then used to weaponize the attack – creating ways to get into the target’s network.