0-Day Hunting Guide: Recon Techniques Nobody Talks About

Finding zero-day vulnerabilities starts long before you write your first exploit. The reconnaissance phase determines whether you'll discover critical bugs or waste months chasing dead ends.

Advanced Attack Surface Mapping

Beyond Subdomain Enumeration

Most researchers stop at subdomain discovery. Elite hunters go deeper:

# Discover forgotten assets
amass enum -d target.com -passive -o subdomains.txt
# Find historical endpoints
waybackurls target.com | grep -E '\.(php|asp|aspx|jsp)' | sort -u
# Identify technology stack fingerprints
httpx -l subdomains.txt -tech-detect -status-code

JavaScript Analysis for Hidden Endpoints

Modern applications leak sensitive endpoints in JavaScript:

1. Extract all JS files from the target
2. Use tools like LinkFinder to identify API endpoints
3. Look for hardcoded API keys and internal service URLs
4. Map authentication flows from frontend code

Cloud Asset Discovery

Organizations often forget about:

• S3 buckets with misconfigured permissions
• Azure blob storage with public access
• GCP resources exposed through federation

The "Forgotten Services" Goldmine

Zero-days often hide in:

• Legacy admin panels on non-standard ports
• Development/staging environments
• Internal tools accidentally exposed to the internet
• Third-party integrations with excessive permissions

Automation at Scale

RaptorX automates this entire reconnaissance pipeline:

• Continuous attack surface monitoring
• Intelligent asset correlation
• Automatic vulnerability hypothesis generation
• Prioritized testing based on exploitation probability

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RaptorX's autonomous agents perform this level of reconnaissance continuously, ensuring you never miss a vulnerable asset.

Read full guide on IntelligenceX Blog →