Information Gathering

The recon phase: passive and active discovery of hosts, services, domains, people, and an organization’s broader footprint, before any deeper testing starts. Most engagements begin here.

Tool Source Notes
nmap official Port/service scanner
gobuster official Directory/DNS/vhost brute-forcer
ffuf aur Fast web fuzzer
dirb aur Classic content discovery
masscan official Ultra-fast port scanner
maltego aur Link-analysis / OSINT graphing
theharvester-git aur Email/subdomain/IP harvesting
sherlock aur Username search across sites
recon-ng aur Web recon framework — currently broken (unresolvable AUR build dependency)

Several webapp shortcuts complement this category directly: Shodan, Censys, Have I Been Pwned, PimEyes, urlscan.io, and the OSINT Framework.