A company recently hired your team of Ethical Hackers to test the security of their network systems. The company wants to have the attack be as realistic as possible. They did not provide any…

Scanning is performed after reconnaissance and requires known IP ranges or hostnames discovered during the information-gathering phase.

Reconnaissance is the first phase of the penetration testing methodology and is the correct starting point when no prior information is given. The team passively or actively gathers intelligence about the organization (OSINT, DNS records, public data) to map the attack surface before engaging any systems. Starting here directly mirrors a real-world attacker scenario, which is what the company requested.

Escalation (privilege escalation) is a late-stage activity that occurs after an initial foothold has already been established on a system.

Enumeration occurs after scanning and is used to extract detailed information such as usernames and shares from systems already identified and scanned.