Reconnaissance for Penetration Testing Using Active Scanning of MITRE ATT&CK

Abstract

In the world of penetration testing, reconnaissance is the most important and first stage of securing an enterprise. Only through offensive exploitation by the pentesters can an enterprise be secured and patched up for vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities that would be exploited by the hackers if left unpatched or solved. The MITRE ATT&CK framework lists out all the possible techniques and tactics to exploit the vulnerabilities in a machine. This ranges from reconnaissance to impact. Any kind of hacking starts with gathering information. The more the hackers manages to get the information about the enterprise like the infrastructure of machines, open ports, active services, directory structure, etc., the more chances the hackers could succeed in exploiting the vulnerabilities and hacking the system. The pentesters can safeguard an enterprise by not hiding most of the information and not accessible to the outside world. For this, the pentesters should think like hackers with malicious intent and perform offensive attacks. Only then, the pentesters can know where the vulnerabilities are and the correct measures to patch those vulnerabilities.