Cybersecurity experts have innovated softwares to promote and enhance security. This is an effort to prevent a cyber-attack, threat, and risks, that continuously abuse our personal, home, business, and company’s cyberspace.
In this article, we will be looking into one of the cybersecurity methods of ethical hacking which is Digital Footprinting. Its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to security experts or illegal hacker use, and all we need to know about the VPN and VOIP Footprinting.
Digital Footprinting and its importance
Digital footprinting is a term used to describe a method or procedure of information gathering that hackers use to obtain data or details about a targeted system and learning all its information.
It is also known as reconnaissance by ethical hackers in one of their phases in ethical hacking. It is used to penetrate the network system and collect data information that will enable exposure of weaknesses and vulnerabilities that illegal hackers tend to exploit.
Most organizations will make use of ethical hacking techniques to identify the potential problem and then create strategic cybersecurity preventive and protective protocols in their network system.
For ethical hackers, this method or phase is a crucial step. This is the time where they can gain and gather important information regarding the assessed network.
The information collected may be online with or without the organization’s knowledge. This can be done through an internet-based control system or accidental indexing of online web pages.
Types of Digital Footprinting
Here are the known types of Digital Footprinting.
Active
Active footprinting is digital footprinting that is mostly created with an intention. It is done through sending emails or social media postings.
Passive
Passive footprinting is digital footprinting that is created unintentionally. The information collected comes from web browser cookies or your IP address.
Functions of Digital Footprinting
The function of digital footprinting is to identify the company’s network structure, like the port, services, and remote network access capabilities. This can also be used to acquire online information about personal interest via browsing history or cookies, political insights, demographics, and religion.
Ethical hackers use this method by integrating the open-source intelligence tools that enable them to look into images, codes, and metadata searches.
VPN and VOIP Footprinting
VPN or Virtual Private Network is a software application that provides the user a secure connection within a company or home network. VOIP or Voice Over Internet Protocol is a network protocol that enables voice-related calls on the internet.
The process involves converting radio or phone signals into digital or network signals. This means that the VOIP signal traffic can pass through VPN, while effectively security the VOIP services through encryption.
When ethical hackers conduct information gathering during the first stages of VOIP footprinting, the information that is collected is the organization’s network structure, operating software of the running VOIP, public VOIP IP address, and the open-source of ports or services in connected devices within the VOIP network.
The information-gathering method has always proven to give advantages to illegal hackers in their attacks. There are several cases that an open network was penetrated and it was then used as leverage for remote access on the system.
Cybersecurity experts in the field of ethical hacking will always be on guard in assisting manufacturers in creating preventive and protective softwares against the illegal use of footprinting.
Career Opportunity
If you are interested to learn more about these methodologies and other techniques that ethical hackers use in protecting organizations, you can do it with us here at Reliable Cyber Solutions, LLC.
We have our online educational programs for ethical hacking and other cybersecurity courses or certifications. Visit us on our website for the details at RCyberSolutions.
