Digging up information on a business or individual is an extremely important part of information gathering. There are many programs and tools that can provide you with detailed reports on desired networks/businesses.
The one discussed in this article is a program called Maltego. By digging up data from all visibly available sectors of the internet, Maltego is ideal for information gathering and data-mining.
Infosec Institute explains the program’s mechanisms,
“The Maltego client sends the request to seed servers in XML format over HTTPS. The request from the seed server is given to the TAS servers which are passed on to the service providers. The request results are given back to the Maltego client.”
There are several different methods of installation. For Linux, you can do:
- (sudo) add-apt-repository ppa:darklordpaunik8880/darkminttrustytahr
- apt-get update
- apt-get install Maltego
Or download the Maltego file from the official site and do:
- cd ~/Downloads
- wget -c https://www.paterva.com/malv34/community/MaltegoCE.v3.4.0.5004.deb
- sudo dpkg -i MaltegoCE.v3.4.0.5004.deb
After installation and registration is complete, Maltego is pretty easy to get the hang of. The general execution is straight forward.
For network footprinting:
- Choose your machine – Company Stalker (email information), Footprint L1 (information gathering level 1), Footprint L2 (information gathering level 2), Footprint L3 (information gathering level intense)
- Input the targeted domain name
- Select “Finish”
- Utilize “Bubble View”
While Maltego is useful in information gathering, it is a useless tool if you don’t learn how to operate it successfully. For example, if you do not utilize “Bubble View”, you’re missing out on the connections made between your objective and its subdomains/linked sites.
This article shows the general execution of business reconnaissance. However, Maltego can also provide individual reconnaissance. Both options are useful in different situations. In conclusion, it’s definitely recommended that you read up on all implementations available in Maltego in order to achieve maximum results.