Recon - The Art of Gathering Information

Recon short for Reconnaissance, is the practice of gathering as many information possible on a target. In Recon-Type CTF Challenges , (Yes! This is a continuation on my WTF is a CTF? article and focusing on Recon) we are usually tasked to find a specific information on the target( person, company, object) such as his line of work, his name, his email-address, etc. While easy as it sounds (I mean how hard is it to find something on the internet these days?) with the wrong tool and if you're not looking at the right place, it will take you hours to find that information.

So today I will be listing some tools and where to look for gathering information:

Google

It's no surpise that Google is you're go to for finding that information. Sometimes Google is more than enough. All you need to do is just dig enough the search results and you'll most likely find what you are looking for.

Social Sites like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Social media sites gives us a general idea what the target looks like, his possible personality. his hobbies and or interests, etc.

Employment related sites like LinkedIn, Monster.com, Glassdoor, Indeed

People usually take employment related sites seriously, you'll find a detailed and a mountain load of information in their job descriptions.

PiPl

PiPl claims to have the world's largest people search engine, Pipl is the place to find the person
behind the email address, social username or phone number.

Whois

Whois tells you who the owner of the domain is. The administrator is most always listed together with his phone number and email-address for easy contact.

Shodan

Shodan is a search engine that lets the user find specific types of computers (webcams, routers, servers, etc.) connected to the internet using a variety of filters.

Maltego

Maltego is a powerful tool for finding data via open source information across the world wide web. Here's a link on how to use Maltego to find or track a specific person. Link