Linux for pentesters
TL;DR
You don’t need to be a Linux wizard, but you do need to be comfortable at a shell: moving around, reading files, permissions, and a handful of commands you’ll use every day.
What it is
Most of your tooling, and a lot of your targets, run Linux. Being able to work at the command line without friction is one of the highest-value basics there is.
The bits you actually use
- Moving around:
cd,ls,pwd,find. - Reading and searching:
cat,less,grep— grep especially, constantly. - Permissions: who owns a file and who can read/write/execute it (
ls -l,chmod). This is where a lot of privilege-escalation lives. - Users and processes:
whoami,id,ps,sudo -l. - Getting data around:
curl,wget, pipes and redirection.
How to get good at it
Use it. Spin up a cheap Linux VM (or a free lab box) and live in the terminal until the basics are muscle memory. That single habit pays off across everything else.