In this chapter, we will analyze the various passive and active techniques of information gathering in detail. From the beginning, we will analyze the most commonly used and most commonly neglected techniques of passive information gathering and in later recipes, we will focus on gaining information through port scanning. Metasploit has several built-in scanning capabilities, as well as some third-party tools integrated with it to further enhance the process of port scanning. We will analyze both the inbuilt scanners, as well as some of the popular third-party scanners which work over the Metasploit Framework. Let's move on to the recipes and start our process of gaining information about our target.