The latest articles on DEV Community by Frankie Sullivan (@sullivan_51). https://dev.to/sullivan_51 https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4211008%2Fda91d9a6-a42b-4ce5-855b-b6fd4061088a.jpg https://dev.to/sullivan_51 en Frankie Sullivan Tue, 27 Oct 2026 15:24:58 +0000 https://dev.to/sullivan_51/recon-notes-what-i-look-at-before-touching-a-target-5hne https://dev.to/sullivan_51/recon-notes-what-i-look-at-before-touching-a-target-5hne <p>Whenever I get a new scope (in a lab or a bug bounty program), I spend the first hour on the boring stuff:</p> <ul> <li> <code>robots.txt</code>, <code>sitemap.xml</code>, well-known endpoints</li> <li>Response headers — the CSP usually tells you what the team cares about</li> <li>JS bundles for API paths and feature flags</li> <li>Historical URLs (Wayback, common crawl)</li> </ul> <p>None of it is clever. But it consistently gives me a map before I start guessing.</p> <p>I keep a small Nuclei template set and a notes file per target. The notes are worth more than the tools.</p> <p>Currently reading about Kotlin Multiplatform for some mobile security experiments. If you have good resources on mobile attack surfaces, send them my way.</p> security recon tools