RECONNAISSANCE

Reconnaissance is the first stage of pentesting. During this stage, our goal is to gather as much useful information about our target as we can without actually making our presence known or making any connections to the target in any way. Invisibility to our target is essential during this stage, as tipping them off to your presence will likely mean a foiled attack - especially in this early stage where there is no leverage over the target yet.

OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) like publicly available posts, websites, articles are a staple of reconnaissance, but there are other more precise ways to gather information without making contact with the target in any detectable way.