Recursion is a Harsh Mistress: How (Not) To Build a Recursive Internet Scanner

This conference talk from DEFCON 32's Recon Village explores the challenges and pitfalls of building recursive internet scanners, with a focus on the speaker's experience developing BBOT. Discover the dangerous edge cases that can transform minor bugs into catastrophic failures when recursion is misapplied in security tools. Learn through animated real-time visualizations how recursion can lead to infinite loops, accidental denial-of-service scenarios, and other unexpected failures in internet-wide reconnaissance. The presentation covers practical techniques to harness recursion's power while avoiding common pitfalls in recon and automation workflows. Valuable for security researchers, recon enthusiasts, and automation developers, this talk provides crucial insights that will transform your approach to implementing recursion in hacking and security scanning tools. Presented by TheTechromancer (@thetechr0mancer) at the Las Vegas Convention Center on August 9, 2024.