Passive Recon Cheat Sheet
Search Engine
Description
Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Blekko, Yandex...
Popular search engines for gathering information.
Search Terms
"company name" + password filetype:xls
(example search term)
Google Hacking Database
www.exploit-db.com/google-hacking-database
Area of Interest
Description
Geographical Locations
Office locations and geographic data of the target.
Company Overview
Subsidiary companies, mergers, acquisitions, etc.
Employee Names & PII
Contact information, emails, phone numbers, and other PII.
Business Partners & Vendors
Relationships with third-party vendors or partners.
Technology in Use
Software, hardware, and technologies used by the target.
Source
Description
Password Dumps
site:pastebin.com "targetURL"
- Search for dumps related to the target.
DNS is a distributed database that resolves domains to IP addresses.
Command
Description
nslookup targeturl.com
Standard DNS lookup.
dig targeturl.com
Detailed DNS query.
A zone transfer may provide hostnames & IP addresses of Internet-accessible systems.
Note : A zone transfer request may trigger IDS/IPS alarms.
Misconfigured, unpatched servers (e.g., dbase.test.target.com
).
Used to control spam emails and impact phishing/social engineering attacks.
Command
Description
whois targeturl.com
Look up domain registration details.
Attack Type
Description
Identify locations for physical attacks
Identify office or building locations.
Phone numbers
War dialing attacks to discover numbers.
Domain Seizure
Attempt to seize domains and create look-alike websites.
Description
Details
Misconfigurations
May leak data and bypass old firewalls/IDS/IPS.
dnsdict6
dnsdict6 -4 targeturl.com
- Enumerates subdomains for IPv4/IPv6.
dnsrevenum6
dnsrevenum6 dnsip ipv6address
- Reverse DNS for IPv6 addresses.
Command
Description
dnsrecon -d targeturl.com
Standard DNS reconnaissance tool.
dnsenum targeturl.com
DNS enumeration tool.
dnsmap targeturl.com
DNS mapping tool for discovering records.
Additional DNS Scanners & Record Enum
dnstracer -v targeturl.com
- Trace DNS information.
dnswalk targeturl.com
- Check for internal DNS consistency.
fierce -dns targeturl.com
- Locates IP space and hostnames via zone transfers and brute force.
Gathering Names & Email Addresses
Command
Description
theharvester -d targeturl.com -b google
Gather email addresses, hosts, and subdomains via search engines.
Tool
Description
Common Passwords
/usr/share/wordlists
- Common password wordlists.
CUPP (Common User Password Profiler)
Customize wordlists based on personal data. CUPP GitHub .
Website Password Profiling
Command
Description
cewl -k -v targeturl.com -w cewl-output.txt
Crawl website and create a wordlist.
Tool
Description
metagoofil
metagoofil -d targeturl.com -t doc,pdf,xls,ppt,odp,ods,docx,xlsx,pptx -l 200 -n 50 -o foldername -f results.html
Command
Description
traceroute targeturl.com
Standard route tracing tool.
hping3 -S targeturl.com -p 80 -c 3
Network packet assembler/analyzer.
intrace
GitHub - intrace - Exploit existing TCP connections for route mapping.