A Comprehensive Report on Computer Network Footprinting Investigation

This report comprehensively investigates computer network footprinting, a crucial process in ethical hacking and cybersecurity. It begins with an introduction to footprinting, its uses, and the importance of information gathering. The report delves into the role of ICANN in managing internet resources and its relationship with Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). It practically demonstrates footprinting techniques using WHOIS lookup, network vulnerability scans, subdomain searches, and Google dorking to gather information about a target system. The report analyzes the pros and cons of public network information and explores additional footprinting sources like search engines, social engineering, and social networking sites. It also discusses the Robtex IP blacklisting service. The conclusion summarizes the findings and emphasizes the significance of understanding footprinting for both attackers and defenders, providing insights into how this knowledge can be used for penetration testing and cybersecurity.

Running head: COMPUTER NETWORK INVESTIGATION
COMPUTER NETWORK INVESTIGATION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Objectives...................................................................................................................................3
Purpose of ICANN.................................................................................................................3
Relationship between ICANN, RIRs and ISPs......................................................................3
Information discovery............................................................................................................4
Results and Analysis................................................................................................................17
Conclusion................................................................................................................................19
References................................................................................................................................20

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Introduction
The term footprinting refers to the process of gathering all the possible amount of data
from a target system and then analyse the data to find ways to enter the system through
hacking. It can be also defined as a vulnerability analysis method. To hack into an
organisation, an ethical hacker needs to spend most of his time trying to profile the
organisation and collecting information regarding the company’s network, host and people.
Footprinting has many uses some of which are: knowing security posture, identification of
vulnerabilities, drawing a network map and reduction of attack area. This report will discuss
some of the techniques related to footprinting. The report will highlight on the namespace
database like ICANN and also describe the relation between RIRs, ICANN and ISPs. The
report will practically demonstrate the footprinting techniques used to gather information
about a system from its IP address.
Objectives
Purpose of ICANN
The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN is a non-
profit organisation that is mainly responsible for maintaining and coordinating the procedures
of many other databases that are all involved in numerical spaces and namespace of the
internet. The ICANN is responsible for performing the technical maintenance work for the
DNS root zones and the Central Internet Address Pools. It also develops policies for the
global Domain Name System or DNS of the internet. ICANN also manages the internet
protocol address spaces for the IPv6 and IPv4 addresses.
Relationship between ICANN, RIRs and ISPs
The IP address space is distributed by the authority of the existing Regional Internet
registries or the RIRs. The IP addresses are then distributed to the customers from the allotted
IP address space by the Internet Service Providers or the ISPs. The Regional Internet
Registries or the RIRs which are responsible for the global internet resource management
which comprises of the APNIC, RIPE NCC and ARIN. This RIR document was developed in
a cooperative manner as a response to a request form the International Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN. So, on request of the ICANN, the RIR was created
which is responsible for allotting IP address space to the ISPs for distribution to customers.

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Information discovery
1. Footprint of an IP address
Yahoo.com

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Microsoft.com

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2. WHOIS IP Lookup
a. 205.6.6.6

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b. 210.6.6.6

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c. 201.6.6.6
3. Footprinting a company
Company chosen: Facebook.com
1. WHOIS lookup