Chapter 3. Explore

Now that an attacker has found a worthwhile target, and has used scanning techniques to find angles of attack against the target, he will begin to build a strong attack profile. At this phase, the attacker has collected critical information on a target's infrastructure and presence and can move forward on exploring the company's assets to determine areas of weakness. In this phase, the attacker looks deeper into the network infrastructure to find actual weaknesses and vulnerabilities to exploit, based upon his or her research from the recon and scanning tactics discussed in previous two chapters.