Hands-On Penetration Testing with Kali NetHunter

Passive techniques

In this first category, we have those techniques that adopt the low-risk approach of patiently waiting. How effective the process and end result turn out to be, depends on the approach used, the strength of the password and the system being targeted.

Sniffing is a very effective method of gaining information, as you are simply plugging into a network and turning on a sniffer that will observe and capture the information as it flows across in the stream of packets. What makes this technique particularly effective is if you are targeting credentials that are transmitted over the network using an unsecured method, such as an older networking protocol such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Telnet, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ...