pentest-recon-surface-analysis

name	pentest-recon-surface-analysis
description	Reconnaissance and attack-surface mapping for endpoint discovery, asset inventory, service enumeration, technology fingerprinting, control-plane surfaces, trust boundaries, and prioritized next tests.

Recon & Surface Analysis

Use When

• The owner phase is target modeling, endpoint discovery, service enumeration, technology fingerprinting, vhost discovery, subdomain enumeration, or control-plane mapping.
• The next step needs a deduplicated inventory and prioritized validation targets.

Handoff Criteria

• Hand off to mapper, authz, input/protocol, XSS, business-logic, OOB, CVE, exploit, or reporting workflows when the main blocker becomes focused validation or delivery.

Output Schema

• Surface inventory: asset, interface, auth state, confidence
• Entry-point matrix: input, trust boundary, initial risk hypothesis
• Prioritized next tests: ordered by likely impact and test cost

Instructions

1. Build an explicit target model first: interfaces, trust boundaries, and identity contexts.
2. Enumerate only what is necessary to expose actionable attack paths.
3. Normalize findings into a deduplicated inventory before deeper testing.
4. Label each surface with attacker preconditions and probable abuse class.
5. Mark unknowns that block progression and propose the minimum test to resolve each.
6. Hand off precise, testable targets to downstream skills.

Should Do

• Keep reconnaissance hypothesis-driven, not tool-driven.
• Capture reproducible evidence for each discovered surface.
• Prioritize externally reachable and privilege-sensitive paths.
• Use up to two controlled pivots per phase; each pivot needs an expected signal and stop condition.
• Treat scanner output as a lead until cross-checked with direct evidence.

Tip: Fuzzing for Virtual Hosts with FFUF

Discover assets not listed in DNS by testing different Host header values. FFUF is the ideal tool for this speed-efficient enumeration.

Quick Guide

1. Optimize: Use small wordlists and fast scans to ensure the agent doesn't get stuck.
2. Execute: ffuf -u $TARGET -H "Host: FUZZ.$TARGET" -w /path/to/small_wordlist
3. Filter: Identify live hosts by filtering unique response sizes or status codes (e.g., -fs [size] or -mc 200).