Using Recon-ng to gather information

Recon-ng is an information-gathering tool that uses many different sources to gather data, for example, on Google, Twitter, and Shodan.

In this recipe, we will learn the basics of Recon-ng and use it to gather public information about our target.

 

Getting ready

Although Recon-ng is ready to use as installed in Kali Linux, some of its modules require an API key to make queries to the online services. Also, having an API key will allow you to perform more advanced searches or avoid query limits in some services.

These keys can be generated by completing the registration on each search engine's website.

How to do it...

Let's do a basic query to illustrate how Recon-ng works:

1. To start Recon-NG from Kali Linux, use the Applications menu (Applications | 01 - Information Gathering | recon-ng) or type the recon-ng command in a Terminal:

2. We will be presented with a command-line interface. To see the modules we have available, we can issue the show modules command.

 

3. Let...