Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v11) — Question 48

Hackers often raise the trust level of a phishing message by modeling the email to look similar to the internal email used by the target company. This includes using logos, formatting, and names of the target company. The phishing message will often use the name of the company CEO, President, or Managers. The time a hacker spends performing research to locate this information about a company is known as?

Answer options

• A. Exploration
• B. Investigation
• C. Reconnaissance
• D. Enumeration

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C, Reconnaissance, which refers to the process of gathering information about a target before an attack. Options A (Exploration) and B (Investigation) do not specifically denote the gathering of intelligence for malicious purposes, while D (Enumeration) refers to a specific technique used to extract information from a system or network.