Passive information gathering is when you use an indirect approach to obtain information about your target. This method obtains information that's publicly available from many sources, thus eliminating direct contact with the potential target. Passive information gathering is usually fruitful, and a lot of organizations usually publish information and details about their organizations as a marketing strategy for their existing and potential customers. Sometimes, when organizations advertise a vacancy on a job recruiting website, the recruiter posts technical requirements for the potential candidate. From a penetration tester's point of view, the technical details can indicate the types of platforms and applications that are running within the organization's network infrastructure.

We have covered the concepts of passive information gathering. Now, let's take a deep dive into learning about OSINT in the next section.