ABSTRACT
In general, all information gathering techniques can be classified into two main categories: active information gathering, and passive information gathering. Information gathering is the first phase of hacking. In this phase, hacker gathers as much information as possible regarding the target's online presence, which in turn reveals useful information about the target itself. There are many sources of information gathering; the most important ones are as follows: social media website, search engines, forums, press releases, people search, and job sites. In active information gathering, hacker directly interact with the target; in passive information gathering, hacker do not interact with the target, but use the information available on the web in order to obtain details about the target. Active information gathering will not be complete without introducing a tool from BackTrack. WhatWeb is an all-an-one package for performing active footprinting on a website. Gathering information about e-mails of employees of an organization can give broad attack vector.
