What hacking process is characterized by gathering information about a target company?

• A. Scanning
• B. Footprinting
• C. Exploitation
• D. Enumeration

Answer: (B)

The question is about the initial act of collecting information about a target organization to build a profile of its exposed assets and potential entry points. This step is footprinting, the information-gathering phase that uses public sources and open data to map out things like domain names, IP ranges, DNS records, network blocks, registrars, and even public details about technologies and personnel. It sets up the attacker’s plan by revealing what to investigate next.

Footprinting is different from scanning, which comes a bit later and focuses on identifying actual live hosts, open ports, and services on the network after some information about the target has already been gathered. Enumeration goes deeper still, pulling out specifics like user accounts, shares, and services once access paths are identified. Exploitation is the step that attempts to abuse a vulnerability to gain unauthorized access.

So gathering information about a target company is footprinting, because it is the broad, preparatory collection of data used to understand the landscape before probing further.