CoreQ Academy2.3 Given a scenario, modify scripts for reconnaissance and enumeration.
Testers adapt small scripts constantly. You should be able to read Bash, Python and PowerShell and change a loop, a condition or an output format.
Purpose
- Information gathering
- Automating lookups and scans across many targets.
- Data manipulation
- Parsing, filtering and reformatting output (e.g. extracting IPs from scan results).
Scripting languages
- Bash
- Linux shell scripting; great for chaining command-line tools with pipes.
- Python
- General-purpose language with rich libraries for networking and parsing.
- PowerShell
- Windows-native scripting with object pipelines and deep OS and AD access.
Logic constructs
- Loops
- Repeat actions over a list, e.g. for each host in a range.
- Conditionals
- If/else decisions, e.g. only report open ports.
- Boolean operator
- AND, OR, NOT combining conditions.
- String operator
- Concatenation, comparison and matching of text.
- Arithmetic operator
- Addition, subtraction, increments, e.g. stepping through ports.
Use of libraries, functions, and classes
- Use of libraries, functions, and classes
- Reusing code (e.g. Python socket, requests, Scapy) and organising logic into functions and classes for readable, reusable tools.
A Bash loop pings 10.0.0.1-254 but prints every result. How would you change it to print only hosts that reply?
Show answer
Wrap the ping in a conditional on its exit status, e.g. for i in $(seq 1 254); do ping -c1 -W1 10.0.0.$i >/dev/null && echo "10.0.0.$i up"; done. The && runs echo only when ping succeeds.
Hands-on practice
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Original CoreQ Academy material, mapped to objective 2.3 of the publicly available CompTIA PenTest+ PT0-003 exam objectives (Exam objectives V3, document version 5.0). Not affiliated with or endorsed by CompTIA. Contains no exam questions.