What is the general process of gathering information about systems that are considered to be “alive” and responding on the network?

• A. Scanning
• B. Enumerating
• C. Spoofing
• D. Sniffing

Answer: (A)

Scanning is the phase that identifies which hosts are online and reachable on a network. It’s about discovering live devices and what they respond to, such as which ports are open or which services are listening, giving you a map of active systems. This fits the idea of gathering information about systems that are alive and responding, because you’re first establishing which machines exist on the network and can be interacted with.

Enumerating goes deeper: once you know which devices are alive, you gather specifics about those systems—accounts, shares, OS versions, and service details. Sniffing focuses on capturing and analyzing the actual network traffic, not on discovering which hosts are alive. Spoofing involves masquerading as another device, which is about deception rather than discovery. So the general process of identifying alive, responsive systems is scanning.