Linux Blind Files

In some cases during exploitation you as an attacker gain the ability to read arbitrary files. As an attacker you need go-to files that cover as many different OS versions as possible in order to either confirm exploitation or gather intelligence on the exploited system. For this we use a “blind file”.

The files below are things to pull when all you can do is to blindly read. Examples of vulnerabilities or situations where this would be helpful might be: local file includes (LFI), directory traversals or remote file share instances like SMB, FTP, NFS or otherwise.

File	Description / Importance
/etc/issue	A message or system identification to be printed before the login prompt.
/etc/motd	Message of the day banner content. Can contain information about the system owners or use of the system.
/etc/passwd	List of account names, groups, home directory, and shell (should be globally readable).
/etc/resolv.conf	Contains the current name servers (DNS) for the system. This is a globally readable file that is less likely to trigger IDS alerts than /etc/passwd.
/etc/shadow	List of all user’s password hashes (requires root).
/home/[USERNAME]/.bash_history ~/.bash_history /root/.bash_history	Shell history for [USERNAME], the current user or root respectively. This file can contain passwords and other sensitive commands and content.