CEH Footprinting, Reconnaissance and Scanning Practice Question
An incident responder notices unusual outbound traffic from a host that is communicating with an external IP on port 4444. The traffic appears to be encrypted. Which tool could be used to initiate a connection to that external IP to gather a banner for service identification?
⚠ Common exam trap
EC-Council often tests the misconception that Telnet is only for remote terminal access on port 23, but the exam expects you to know Telnet can connect to any TCP port for banner grabbing.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Telnet
Telnet can be used to connect to any TCP port, including port 4444, to manually interact with a service and retrieve its banner. Banners often reveal the service name, version, and other identifying information, which is critical for footprinting and reconnaissance. Even though the traffic is encrypted, the initial banner may be sent in cleartext before encryption begins, or the connection attempt itself can reveal the service type.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
traceroute
Why it's wrong here
Traceroute is a diagnostic tool used to display the route and measure transit delays of packets across an IP network. It operates by sending packets with incrementally increasing Time-To-Live (TTL) values, typically using ICMP Echo Request or UDP probes, to map the network path. However, it does not establish a full TCP connection to a specific application port, and therefore cannot elicit or display application-layer service banners.
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nslookup
Why it's wrong here
Nslookup is a command-line tool primarily used for querying the Domain Name System (DNS) to obtain domain name or IP address mapping or other DNS records. Its function is to resolve hostnames to IP addresses or vice versa by communicating with DNS servers. This utility does not interact directly with services running on specific TCP/UDP ports of a target host, making it incapable of retrieving service banners.
- ✓
Telnet
Why this is correct
Telnet is an application-layer protocol and command-line utility that establishes a raw Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a specified port on a remote host. Upon successful connection, many network services are configured to immediately send an initial banner containing information such as the service type and version. This direct, interactive connection capability makes Telnet an effective tool for manually identifying unknown services by observing these initial banners.
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ping
Why it's wrong here
Ping is a network utility used to test the reachability of a host on an Internet Protocol (IP) network and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. It operates by sending Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Echo Request packets to the target host and listening for ICMP Echo Reply packets. Since ping functions at the network layer using ICMP, it cannot establish a TCP connection to an application port or retrieve application-layer service banners.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CEH practice question is part of Courseiva's free EC-Council certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the CEH exam.