Online forums can be a useful resource to help with technical problems but airing those problems in public can also expose information. Knowing when employees are on vacation can help an attacker choose favorable timing. Knowing someone's former university or the names of their pets may help to guess passwords or to craft an effective phishing email. Social media can reveal a lot of information about individuals. Contact information may make it easier to target users or to trick them into helping a hacker. Knowing the names of authorized users makes it easier to guess usernames and email addresses. Posting employee and contact information can provide useful information to a potential hacker. Most domain registrars offer the ability to hide your information from the database. It allows a hacker to discover the person or organization behind a URL and to view real-world contact information. The WHOIS database enables searching for information about the registered owner of a domain. Hackers also use indirect information when footprinting. Information allows an attacker to focus their attention and to make plans in advance more easily. If these server details remain unknown then a hacker must plan for all possibilities. Does the HTTP response header include software version information? Learn how to modify the configuration so that you can hide it. Configure your web server or application to remove them. For example, do URLs include file extensions such as dot PHP? An attacker can tell what server-side language is being used. As a web developer, you want to be mindful about what information you're broadcasting. It's easy to scan a server and to list the software and services available on all of the open ports. For example, a gap in otherwise consecutive IP addresses might help them to discover a new server. Hackers might examine the public domains, subdomains, and IP address ranges looking for patterns or clues. This information is helpful for strategizing and for planning an attack. An attacker engaging in footprinting might seek to discover what servers are visible on the network, explore an organization's security procedures both online and offline, watch for activity patterns which occur daily, weekly, or monthly, or examine an organization's waste and information disposal practices. Footprinting is a systematic exploration of a system's defenses and vulnerabilities. When hackers perform reconnaissance on computer systems it's called footprinting. They make maps and note the locations of security cameras. They wait patiently as key personnel come and go so they can create a schedule of their daily routine. They watch the outside of the building through binoculars. Most Hollywood heist films have a scene where the heroes perform some reconnaissance on their target. Give out the least amount of information necessary to complete the job. It's similar to the principle of least privilege that we saw earlier. Information should be kept on a need-to-know basis. Therefore the less information you give out, the better. Learning new information benefits an attacker. Another nice rhyme first popularized during World War Two is, "Loose lips might sink ships." Careless talk during wartime may provide the enemy with information that would help them to strategize or to plan better attacks. It means that it's more secure to withhold or obscure information because information is valuable to an attacker. Security through obscurity is our next core security principle.
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