During an engagement, a penetration tester runs the following command against the host system: host -t axfr domain.com dnsl.domain.com Which of the following techniques best describes what the tester

The correct answer is A. Zone transfer. A DNS zone transfer attack occurs when a misconfigured DNS server allows attackers to retrieve the entire DNS record set. The command host -t axfr domain.com dnsl.domain.com requests an AXFR (authoritative transfer) of the DNS records. This provides subdomains, email servers, and

Submitted by ahmad_uae· Mar 6, 2026Reconnaissance and Enumeration

Question

During an engagement, a penetration tester runs the following command against the host system:

host -t axfr domain.com dnsl.domain.com Which of the following techniques best describes what the tester is doing?

Options

AZone transfer
BHost enumeration
CDNS poisoning
DDNS query

How the community answered

(30 responses)

A
90% (27)
C
7% (2)
D
3% (1)

Explanation

A DNS zone transfer attack occurs when a misconfigured DNS server allows attackers to retrieve the entire DNS record set. The command host -t axfr domain.com dnsl.domain.com requests an AXFR (authoritative transfer) of the DNS records. This provides subdomains, email servers, and internal DNS records, which attackers can use for

Topics

#DNS enumeration#Zone transfer#host command#Reconnaissance

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