Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH v12) — Question 237

In the process of footprinting a target website, an ethical hacker utilized various tools to gather critical information. The hacker encountered a target site where standard web spiders were ineffective due to a specific file in its root directory. However, they managed to uncover all the files and web pages on the target site, monitoring the resulting incoming and outgoing traffic while browsing the website manually. What technique did the hacker likely employ to achieve this?

Answer options

• A. Using the Netcraft tool to gather website information
• B. Examining HTML source code and cookies
• C. Using Photon to retrieve archived URLs of the target website from archive.org
• D. User-directed spidering with tools like Burp Suite and WebScarab

Correct answer: D

Explanation

The correct answer is D, as user-directed spidering allows the hacker to manually control the crawling process, which is effective in situations where standard spiders fail. Options A, B, and C, while useful for certain types of information gathering, do not specifically address the need for manual monitoring and exploration of a site when automated tools are ineffective.