Question

During an internal engagement, you have a file named hosts.txt containing one IP address per line. You need a quick Python script to identify which hosts respond to a single ICMP echo request so you can prioritize them for deeper enumeration. Which approach BEST accomplishes this while producing a clean list of only the responsive hosts?

Accepted Answer

Read each line from hosts.txt, invoke the system ping command via subprocess with a single-count flag, and append the IP to a results list only when the return code is 0.

Answer

Open hosts.txt and print every line to stdout, relying on the operator to visually confirm which addresses are reachable.

Answer

Use socket.connect() on TCP port 80 for each IP and treat any successful connection as proof the host is up.

Answer

Import the requests library and send an HTTP GET to each IP, logging any response as a live host.