Security Sift

Let me start this post by saying I’m a huge Google fan. I use multiple Android devices and like many others, I’ve become an avid user of services such as Gmail, Docs, Maps, Photos, and Youtube. I even find myself fondly reminiscing about discontinued services such as Reader. And, if you’re like me, Google search has become an instrumental tool in your professional endeavors. So please keep in mind, this post is…

Introduction Recently, while watching the House Committee hearings on the security of Healthcare.gov, I was disappointed to hear testimony likening passive reconnaissance to a form of unauthorized/illegal activity that involved potentially invasive actions such as port/vulnerability scanning. To the contrary, passive recon can be one of the most useful and unobtrusive methods of data gathering for any penetration test or security assessment. In this post I outline what passive reconnaissance…