Passive reconnaissance phase — OSINT, DNS, WHOIS, subdomain discovery. Use when starting a new engagement or when the current phase is RECON.
Scanned 8/31/2026
Install via CLI
openskills install s0ld13rr/pentestcode---
name: recon-phase
tags: [recon]
description: Passive reconnaissance phase — OSINT, DNS, WHOIS, subdomain discovery. Use when starting a new engagement or when the current phase is RECON.
---
# Passive Reconnaissance Checklist
Work through each item. Mark completed in your state updates. Skip items not applicable to the target type.
## DNS Enumeration
```bash
dig <domain> ANY +noall +answer
dig <domain> MX +short
dig <domain> NS +short
dig <domain> TXT +short
host -t AXFR <domain> <nameserver> # zone transfer attempt
```
## WHOIS
```bash
whois <domain>
whois <ip>
```
## Subdomain Discovery
```bash
subfinder -d <domain> -silent -o subdomains.txt
amass enum -passive -d <domain> -o amass_subs.txt
# Merge and deduplicate
cat subdomains.txt amass_subs.txt | sort -u > all_subs.txt
```
## Certificate Transparency
```bash
curl -s "https://crt.sh/?q=%25.<domain>&output=json" | jq -r '.[].name_value' | sort -u
```
## Reverse DNS
```bash
# For each discovered IP
for ip in $(cat ips.txt); do host "$ip"; done
```
## IP Geolocation & ASN
```bash
whois -h whois.radb.net -- "-i origin $(whois <ip> | grep -i origin | awk '{print $2}')"
curl -s "https://ipinfo.io/<ip>/json" | jq .
```
## Google Dorking
Search patterns:
- `site:<domain> filetype:pdf|doc|xls|conf|sql|log`
- `site:<domain> inurl:admin|login|wp-admin|phpmyadmin`
- `site:<domain> intitle:"index of"`
- `site:<domain> ext:env|cfg|ini|bak`
## Shodan / Censys
```bash
shodan host <ip>
shodan search "hostname:<domain>"
```
## Web Archive
```bash
curl -s "https://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=*.<domain>&output=json&fl=original&collapse=urlkey" | jq -r '.[][]' | sort -u
```
## Technology Detection
```bash
whatweb <url> -v
curl -sI <url> # server headers, X-Powered-By
```
## Phase Completion Criteria
Move to ENUMERATION when:
- All target domains/IPs identified
- Subdomains enumerated
- DNS records collected
- WHOIS data recorded
- Technology stack identified where possible
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Ultra-compressed communication mode. Cuts token usage ~75% by speaking like caveman while keeping full technical accuracy. Supports intensity levels: lite, full (default), ultra, wenyan-lite, wenyan-full, wenyan-ultra. Use when user says "caveman mode", "talk like caveman", "use caveman", "less tokens", "be brief", or invokes /caveman. Also auto-triggers when token efficiency is requested.