Footprinting

Footprinting is a term used which means to gather as much information about your target as possible before actually doing anything at all. The more you know about your target the better your attack will be.

Company Name

A company name is most important. Get that information from either google or sec.gov. It is also good to check usenet news for any postings about the company.

Website

See if the company has purchased a domain name. Website is the best way to gather information about your target. You can use whois to gather more info. Also find out who hosts their website, what their mail exchange is and what their NS are.

Physical Security Engineering

Gathering information through physical means is the easiest and quite crucial. You must know where your target is physically located, what floor or building they are on. You will need to go to your target as a delivery person, tech support or just to use the toilet. Scan and plot the angle of all security cameras and security doors. Custodial work is the most optimum in gathering information. Trash cans close to printers always have the best information. Seek information about floor plans, personal and phone lists. As soon as you get employee names you can study these people by doing simple internet searches.

• Look for papers with employ names.
• Figure out the pattern of their user logins, normally they are first letter of first name followed by the last name.

Use google dorks searches to narrow down your attack. Here is a google dork search pattern for sql injection

"Unable to jump to row" "on MySQL result index" "on line" site:example.com

You can file more dorks at http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ghdb/

You can automate this process with a utility called SEAT