Simon is a former employee of Trinitron XML Inc. He feels he was wrongly terminated and wants to hack into his former company's network. Since Simon remembers some of the server names, he attempts to run the axfr and ixfr commands using DIG. What is Simon trying to accomplish here?
AXFR and IXFR are commands used in the context of DNS (Domain Name System) zone transfers. A zone transfer is the process of copying the DNS records from one DNS server to another. The AXFR (Authoritative Zone Transfer) command is used to request a full zone transfer, while IXFR (Incremental Zone Transfer) is used to request only the changes made since the last update. Therefore, Simon is trying to perform a DNS zone transfer, which would allow him to collect information about the network's DNS records.
You can use different mechanisms for DNS zone transfer but the simplest one is AXFR (technically speaking, AXFR refers to the protocol used during a DNS zone transfer). It is a client-initiated request. Therefore, you can edit information on the primary DNS server and then use AXFR from the secondary DNS server to download the entire zone.