Passive Attack
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What it is
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An attack — malware, a data breach, and similar — carried out broadly against many people at once, rather than aimed specifically at you.
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Why it matters
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Because passive attacks don't single you out, they're mitigated differently than targeted ones: general application security hygiene and containment (so a single compromised app can't take down everything else) matter more than trying to anticipate a specific determined adversary.
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How it works
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Since you generally can't know in advance whether an app is safe or will remain safe, the practical defense is Compartmentalization : separating what different applications can access, so that if one is compromised, the damage doesn't spread to everything else on your device.
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Contrast with
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Unavailable reference
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Related
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