During a penetration test, you're tasked with automating the process of scanning a network to identify live hosts and then perform a vulnerability scan on the discovered hosts. Which of the following scripting approaches allows you to meet the requirement while adhering to best practices for efficient and effective test automation?
Manually logging the IP addresses of live hosts and then using a seperate tool to scan each IP address for vulnerabilities.
Running a full vulnerability scan on the entire IP range of the network without performing host discovery.
Using a script that incorporates an initial ping sweep to identify live hosts and then dynamically passing the list of live IP addresses to a vulnerability scanner
Performing a vulnerability scan using random sampling of IP addresses in the network to predict the presence of live hosts.
The correct answer is 'Using a script that incorporates an initial ping sweep to identify live hosts and then dynamically passing the list of live IP addresses to a vulnerability scanner'. This process is efficient as it first narrows down the list of targets to active hosts and then applies a more resource-intensive vulnerability scan solely to those hosts, rather than wasting resources on scanning potentially down or non-existent systems.
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What is a ping sweep and how does it work?
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Why is it important to adhere to best practices in test automation during penetration testing?