Traceroute

 When 2 data packets travel form source to destination both of them may take different paths.Trace route is a tool that allows us to trace the path between the 2 systems.Initially Trace route was used for troubleshooting, by finding where the error occurred in the path, but nowadays it is being used for information gathering by hackers. Information gathering is the initial and perhaps the most important part in hacking or penetration testing.

Working of traceroute :

Traceroute will create an UDP packet and send it to an higher port of the target.Typically on most occasions the higher port number will be closed .So the target will generate an ICMP unreachable error message to the attacker.This error message confirms the message is reached and gathers information about the target host and make it possible to trace the path to the target system.

By this method attacker can get answers of many critical questions like :
How is the target network?
Where does it get the bandwidth from?
Who is the ISP ?
What is the path followed ?

Now trace route is used for a  vareity of applications like :

1)OS detection ( by analyzing the TTL value)
2)Firewall detection
3)Gather the network topography information
4)Find out the exact geographical location of the target system

How to trace route using windows OS..?

In the cmd  type :  tracert and press enter

for help in tracert command in cmd type:   tracert/?

the main problem with this method is that it is not very efficient. So we may also try out some other tools available in the internet to do the traceroute.

Some good tools are :
Visualroute
Neo trace
3D Trace route