In any situation, whether daily life or a network penetration test, understanding our surroundings is crucial. This awareness allows us to make informed, proactive decisions. We may discover accessible hosts, protections to bypass, or tools incompatible with the target system.
This is basically enumeration section, but most of it is about Living Off The Land enumeration, which is more stealthy and uses built-in tools. If there are command which requires not built in tool, I'll write about it. If you are inside domain environment, look for LOL subsections in Enum Section
Installed applications
Installed services
Websites
File Shares
Databases
Directory Services (such as Active Directory, Azure AD, etc.)
Name Servers
Deployment Services
Certificate Authority
Source Code Management Server
Virtualization
Messaging
Monitoring and Logging Systems
Backups
Sensitive Data
Keylogging
Screen Capture
Network Traffic Capture
Previous Audit reports
User Information
History files, interesting documents (.doc/x,.xls/x,password./pass., etc)
Roles and Privileges
Web Browsers
IM Clients