Sample write-up. This case study is a placeholder illustrating the format and depth of a real engagement report. Replace with an anonymized, disclosure-approved write-up from an actual engagement once available.
Recon Automation Uncovering Shadow Infrastructure
Using AI-assisted recon to surface an exposed staging subdomain running an outdated admin panel.
Context
[PLACEHOLDER — Client industry, e.g. "a mid-size e-commerce company"] commissioned an external attack-surface review to understand what an outside attacker could see before a planned infrastructure migration.
Finding
The recon automation pipeline (the same approach used in the Recon Automation Engine project) enumerated subdomains from certificate-transparency logs and passive DNS, then used LLM-assisted tech-stack inference to flag anomalies. One result stood out: a forgotten staging subdomain (admin-staging.example.com) still resolving to a live host, running an outdated version of an internal admin panel with a known authentication-bypass CVE.
Impact
The staging host was reachable from the public internet, was not covered by the client's asset inventory, and ran software with a public exploit for authentication bypass — meaning an attacker performing the same passive recon could have gained administrative access without ever touching the production environment.
Proof of concept (redacted)
[PLACEHOLDER — recon output and version-fingerprinting evidence, redacted of real hostnames]
Remediation
The staging host was decommissioned and its DNS record removed; going forward, the client added certificate-transparency monitoring to their asset-inventory process so newly issued certificates for forgotten subdomains are flagged automatically.
Severity
CVSS 3.1: 8.6 (High) — Confidentiality: High, Integrity: High, Availability: None, Attack Complexity: Low, Privileges Required: None.