Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) Practice Question

Providing the scanner with host credentials allows it to authenticate to each system and collect detailed information such as missing patches, registry keys, and running services. This is known as a credentialed (or authenticated) vulnerability scan. Because the tool can see the system from an insider's perspective, it produces more accurate results and fewer false positives than a non-credentialed scan. A passive scan only listens to network traffic and would not log on to hosts. A non-intrusive external scan targets systems from outside without credentials. Reconnaissance during a penetration test focuses on information gathering for exploitation and is not classified as a vulnerability scan type.