An adversary exploits functionality meant to identify information about the primary users on the target system to an authorized user. They may do this, for example, by reviewing logins or file modification times. By knowing what owners use the target system, the adversary can inform further and more targeted malicious behavior. An example Windows command that may accomplish this is "dir /A ntuser.dat". Which will display the last modified time of a user's ntuser.dat file when run within the root folder of a user. This time is synonymous with the last time that user was logged in.

An adversary discovers connections between systems by exploiting the target system's standard practice of revealing them in searchable, common areas. Through the identification of shared folders/drives between systems, the adversary may further their goals of locating and collecting sensitive information/files, or map potential routes for lateral movement within the network.

An adversary sends out an ICMP Type 8 Echo Request, commonly known as a 'Ping', in order to determine if a target system is responsive. If the request is not blocked by a firewall or ACL, the target host will respond with an ICMP Type 0 Echo Reply datagram. This type of exchange is usually referred to as a 'Ping' due to the Ping utility present in almost all operating systems. Ping, as commonly implemented, allows a user to test for alive hosts, measure round-trip time, and measure the percentage of packet loss. Performing this operation for a range of hosts on the network is known as a 'Ping Sweep'. While the Ping utility is useful for small-scale host discovery, it was not designed for rapid or efficient host discovery over large network blocks. Other scanning utilities have been created that make ICMP ping sweeps easier to perform. Most networks filter ingress ICMP Type 8 messages for security reasons. Various other methods of performing ping sweeps have developed as a result. It is important to recognize the key security goal of the adversary is to discover if an IP address is alive, or has a responsive host. To this end, virtually any type of ICMP message, as defined by RFC 792 is useful. An adversary can cycle through various types of ICMP messages to determine if holes exist in the firewall configuration. When ICMP ping sweeps fail to discover hosts, other protocols can be used for the same purpose, such as TCP SYN or ACK segments, UDP datagrams sent to closed ports, etc.

An attacker exploits a DNS misconfiguration that permits a ZONE transfer. Some external DNS servers will return a list of IP address and valid hostnames. Under certain conditions, it may even be possible to obtain Zone data about the organization's internal network. When successful the attacker learns valuable information about the topology of the target organization, including information about particular servers, their role within the IT structure, and possibly information about the operating systems running upon the network. This is configuration dependent behavior so it may also be required to search out multiple DNS servers while attempting to find one with ZONE transfers allowed.