Automated Tools for Network Discovery

This chapter presents three automated tools that can be used to gather information, and the various features of each tool: SpiderFoot, Intrigue.io, and Recon‐NG. SpiderFoot is based on the concept of information chaining, meaning that one piece of collected data is used to automatically obtain the next piece of data in a recursive process until all possible open‐source intelligence (OSINT) for the target and related entities has been collected. Intrigue is the open‐source engine that powers Intrigue.io, a platform for attack surface discovery. The primary focus of Intrigue is to discover assets and “interesting things” about an organization from an external perspective. Within Intrigue, every bit of information (or intelligence) is classified as an entity. Recon‐NG is probably one of the most widely used OSINT/recon gathering tools. The Recon‐NG tool comes with many built‐in modules organized by category, each with their own capabilities.