Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By : Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi
Book Image

Practical Linux Security Cookbook

By: Michael A Lindner, Tajinder Kalsi

Overview of this book

With the growing popularity of Linux, more and more administrators have started moving to the system to create networks or servers for any task. This also makes Linux the first choice for any attacker now. Due to the lack of information about security-related attacks, administrators now face issues in dealing with these attackers as quickly as possible. Learning about the different types of Linux security will help create a more secure Linux system. Whether you are new to Linux administration or experienced, this book will provide you with the skills to make systems more secure. With lots of step-by-step recipes, the book starts by introducing you to various threats to Linux systems. You then get to walk through customizing the Linux kernel and securing local files. Next you will move on to manage user authentication locally and remotely and also mitigate network attacks. Finally, you will learn to patch bash vulnerability and monitor system logs for security. With several screenshots in each example, the book will supply a great learning experience and help you create more secure Linux systems.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Practical Linux Security Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using system tools – stat


While working on Linux, the most commonly used command is ls, which gives a listing of the files in the directory we specified. However, it shows only a little information about the files.

Instead, if we use the stat command, we can get more information about the files/directories when compared to using ls. Because stat is able to get information about a file from its node, it is able to give more information about the files.

Getting ready

Since stat is a built-in command of Linux, nothing else is needed to be installed in order to use it.

How to do it…

This section will explain the options and usage of the stat command. Using stat, we will can get the detailed status of a particular file or filesystem.

  1. Suppose we have a file called example.txt. When we perform a long-listing of this file using the ls -l command, we get information about the file, which includes when the file was last modified.

    However, when we use the stat command to check the details of the same file...