Jason, a certified ethical hacker, is hired by a major e-commerce company to evaluate their network's security. As part of his reconnaissance, Jason is trying to gain as much information as possible…

Directly connecting to servers and attempting to exploit vulnerabilities is an active and aggressive method that will almost certainly trigger an IDS.

Passive reconnaissance techniques, such as performing WHOIS lookups for domain registration information, NS (name server) lookups, and other open-source intelligence (OSINT) gathering, involve querying publicly available data sources without directly interacting with the target's network systems. This approach generates no traffic on the target's network, making it highly effective for gathering information about network infrastructure and potential entry points without triggering intrusion detection systems (IDS).

A DNS zone transfer is an active query to a DNS server that requests a full list of domain records, which is often restricted and can be logged or detected by an IDS.

A ping sweep is an active scanning technique that sends ICMP requests to multiple hosts to identify live systems, and it can be detected by an IDS as suspicious network activity.