Mastering Linux Security and Hardening - Second Edition

Analyze a file with strings

Executable files often have strings of text embedded in them. You can use the strings utility to look at those strings. (Yeah, that makes sense, right?) Depending on your distro, strings might or might not already be installed. It's already on CentOS, but to get it on Ubuntu, you'll need to install the binutils package, like so:

sudo apt install binutils

As an example, let's look at this Your File Is Ready To Download_2285169994.exe file that was automatically downloaded from a cryptocoin faucet site. (If you want to play with this yourself, you'll find this in the code file that you can download from the Packt Publishing website.) To examine the file, do the following:

strings "Your File Is Ready To Download_2285169994.exe" ...