This four-hour, hands-on course is a quick start into the world of Linux

Why are all the “cool kids” using Linux? Could it be that the best tools for both the Red and Blue teams run on Linux? Could it be because modern, cloud-based infrastructures are built on Linux and easily managed using Linux-based tools? Or that free Linux operating systems make it easy to build out your own home lab environment?

Don’t fear the Linux command-line. Embrace it! Learn how to get around in Linux with simple command line tricks and short-cuts to improve your efficiency. Understand the Linux philosophy and the basic building blocks that will have you up and going in no time. And know how to get help from the operating system so that you can continue to learn and grow on your own.

Getting Around

The Linux file system
cd, pwd, and ls
Relative vs absolute pathnames
Tab completion

LAB: Directory Jeopardy!

Basic Commands

File manipulation (cp, mv, and rm)
Getting to know ls
Getting help
Command history searching and editing
cat and less
Effective use of wildcards
su and sudo

LAB: Only Seven Commands? No Worries!

Building Blocks

The Unix/Linux command philosophy
Slicing and dicing (cut and awk)
Selecting (grep)
Sorting and collecting (sort and uniq)
Sampling (head, tail, wc)

LAB: Learning to Linux

Virtual

September 5th – 11:00 AM to 4:00 PM* EDT

*Class time begins an hour early to set up VMs and other resources

Key Takeaways

Navigating the Linux directory structure
Sampling and accessing files and directories
Selecting, sorting, and manipulating data
Shell pipelines
Using command history
Getting help

Who Should Take This Course

Red teamers who want to leverage Linux tools for exploitation and post-exploitation
SOC analysts who need to review data and alerts in the Linux environment
Administrators and developers building and defending Linux infrastructures

Audience Skill Level

No familiarity with Linux is assumed. Experience with some command line (e.g. Windows cmd.exe or PowerShell) is helpful but not necessary.

What Each Student Will Be Provided With

Students will receive course slides in PDF form along with lab exercises which they can run on their own Linux system. This material can be downloaded from https://github.com/halpomeranz/LinuxCmdLine

A laptop with a working Linux virtual machine (or running Linux natively)