L in u X ba sics for h acke rs g e t t I n g s t a r t e d w I t h

27
E XERCISES
Before you move on to Chapter 3, try out the skills you learned from this chapter 
by completing the following exercises:
1. Navigate to /usr/share/metasploit-framework/data/wordlists. This is a 
directory of multiple wordlists that can be used to brute force passwords 
in various password-protected devices using Metasploit, the most popular 
pentesting and hacking framework.
2. Use the cat command to view the contents of the file password.lst.
3. Use the more command to display the file password.lst.
4. Use the less command to view the file password.lst.
5. Now use the nl command to place line numbers on the passwords in 
password.lst. There should be around 88,396 passwords.
6. Use the tail command to see the last 20 passwords in password.lst.
7. Use the cat command to display password.lst and pipe it to find all the 
passwords that contain 123.

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3
A N A LY Z I N G A N D M A N A G I N G 
N E T W O R K S
Understanding networking is crucial for 
any aspiring hacker. In many situations, 
you’ll be hacking something over a network, 
and a good hacker needs to know how to con-
nect to and interact with that network. For example, 
you may need to connect to a computer with your 
Internet Protocol (IP) address hidden from view, or you may need to redi-
rect a target’s Domain Name System (DNS) queries to your system; these 
kinds of tasks are relatively simple but require a little Linux network know-
how. This chapter shows you some essential Linux tools for analyzing and 
managing networks during your network-hacking adventures.
Analyzing Networks with ifconfig
The 
ifconfig
command is one of the most basic tools for examining and 
interacting with active network interfaces. You can use it to query your 
active network connections by simply entering 
ifconfig
in the terminal. 
Try it yourself, and you should see output similar to Listing 3-1.

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