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?
Running a full vulnerability scan on the entire IP range of the network without performing host discovery.
Manually logging the IP addresses of live hosts and then using a seperate tool to scan each IP address for vulnerabilities.
Performing a vulnerability scan using random sampling of IP addresses in the network to predict the presence of live hosts.
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
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?