Host

Host

Host is another tool from the BIND package that allows the querying of
a name server. It can perform the same queries as both NSLookup and
dig so will only be demonstrated here for the purpose of displaying the
mail servers in the target domain.
host target.com > tmp.txt
The only parameter is the name of the target domain. The output can be
piped into a file using the > tmp.txt as seen before. Figure 8 shows the
results from a host command.


iss.net has address 208.21.0.19
iss.net mail is handled (pri=10) by mutex.netrex.com
iss.net mail is handled (pri=15) by chcg-mx1.iss.net
iss.net mail is handled (pri=5) by atla-mx1.iss.net


Sam Spade
Sam Spade is a Microsoft Windows application providing a variety of
functions not normally available from a Windows command prompt. It
was briefly mentioned in Module 5 as a tool to perform a Whois query,
but can also be used to perform dig and NSLookup queries, as well as
full zone transfers.

Zone Transfer Query Refusal
Zone transfers were conceived as a method for DNS servers to
propagate zone information throughout the zone, thus maintaining a
current zone file on each one. Originally, security was not a primary
concern so any computer could pose as a name server and send a query
for a full zone transfer, gaining valuable information about the hosts on
the targeted domain. Recent implementations of DNS server software
allow a security policy to be configured such that only specified
computers will be able to successfully query the DNS server. Where
such a policy has been configured, results from the above tools will
merely show a message stating that the query has been refused.