Theharvester Backtrack 5- Information Gathering Tutorial

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Theharvester Backtrack 5- Information Gathering Tutorial

Information is a weapon, a successful penetration testing and a hacking process need a lots of relevant information that is why, information gathering so called foot printing is the first step of hacking. An intelligent penetration tester use some intelligent tools and techniques to get the right information on a right time, for social engineering (human hacking) you need relevant information about a person. So the point of this little discussion is to realize the importance of information gathering.

What Is TheHarvester

After getting some knowledge about information gathering you might be interested to know how to perform it. TheHarvester is a tool for gathering e-mail accounts, user names and hostnames/subdomains from different public sources like search engines and PGP key servers. This tools has designed to help the penetration tester on a earlier stage, it is an effective and simple tool that is very easy to use.

Supported Sources for Information Gathering

Google – emails,subdomains/hostnames
Google profiles – Employee names
Bing search – emails, subdomains/hostnames,virtual hosts
Pgp servers – emails, subdomains/hostnames
Linkedin – Employee names
Exalead – emails,subdomain/hostnames

FootPrinting-First Step Of Ethical Hacking

Maltego- Information Gathering Tool Tutorial

Dnsmap- DNS Network Mapper

Backtrack 5- DNSenum Information Gathering Tool

Download Theharvester

If you are using backtrack 5 and other versions of backtrack than you not need to download and run harvester because it is available on backtrack, while for other Linux distributions like ubuntu download and install it. However you can use Theharvester for other Operating system because it need python to run.If you are using Blackbuntu than theharvester available on it.

TheHarvester Tutorial

Theharvester is a very easy tool to use just follow the tutorial to get the best result. For backtrack open terminal and locate the directory.

root@bt:/pentest/enumeration/theharvester#

For other distributions locate the directory. For best result I use the command

root@bt:/pentest/enumeration/theharvester# ./theHarvester.py -d google.com -l 500 -b google

root@bt:/pentest/enumeration/theharvester# ./theHarvester.py -d targetsite.com -l 500 -b google

So here is the result with complete details.

I hope you are enjoying the reading, now use the wonderful tool by yourself and if you have any question ask via comment box.

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CIP Cyber Staff

CIP Cyber Staff comprises CIP cybersecurity experts committed to delivering comprehensive information on critical infrastructure protection. The content covers diverse topics, equipping professionals to defend organizations and communities in an ever-evolving cyber landscape.

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