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Changing Passwords
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Difficulty
Beginner
Duration
1h 16m
Students
171
Ratings
4.6/5
Description

This course provides an overview of Kali Linux and some of its main components and features. We'll also take a look at Linux in general including how it looks, how to use it, how to use the command line, how to change the settings, and more. We recommend taking this course as part of the Web Penetration Testing & Bug Bounty Hunting learning path.

Intended Audience

This course is intended for anyone who wants to learn the basics of Kali Linux, with a view to becoming an ethical hacker and/or a bug bounty hunter.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this course, it would be beneficial to already have some experience with Linux.

Transcript

Hi. During this section, we have learnt a lot of Linux commands. And actually, we're going to learn a little bit more in this lecture and then we are okay. So, before we go on, you have to make sure that you're learning Linux. You're not learning Kali Linux, you're not learning a version of Kali Linux, you're actually learning the Linux, you're learning the commands, so that if you come across in any situation where you need to work with another version, another distribution, you would feel comfortable. Of course, you are not comfortable at this point, but you will be after the end of this course. So, let's see a little bit more command. Right now, you know the ls. It lists the available files and folders. But what you don't know is the ls-la. Like this, ls-la. So, if you do that rather than ls, it lists all the hidden files and folders along with more detailed view as well. So, for example, over here we have all the lines and inside of the documents, I believe we don't have any hidden files and folders. But if it were, we would have seen them over here. The first column is not exactly as important right now. But you can see the Kali, the user that has created this file and also the group and also the bytes of the file and the date of the file. So, the first column represents the permissions, who has the read and write permissions. We cannot see that in ls. And also, again, don't forget that we can see the hidden files and folders which is one of the main reasons why we may want to use ls-la. Let's go to the second command which is ifconfig in which we can see the IP details, the local private IP details of the computer that we are working with. This is not our public IP address. And we're going to see the difference between public IP and private IP or local IP addresses in the upcoming lectures. But you need to know that you can actually execute ifconfig and find your IP address. In this case, I have 10.0.2.15, and I have this netmask address and broadcast addresses. So, we're going to learn about those in the upcoming lectures, but right now, make sure that you know how to get your IP address by running ifconfig. And also, one of the most important things that we should learn is how to change the password. Because you know root and toor kali kali, they're all very bad passwords and everybody knows them. Even if you're using Kali as like a virtual machine, I believe you should actually change the password of it in order to make it more secure. So, what we can do, we can change the password of the Kali user or if you're using the custom OVA, custom Kali Linux for this course, you can change the password of the root user as well. So, I'm going to show it with the Kali, it's exactly the same command. The command is very, very easy. It's just passwd. So, once you do that, it will ask you for your old and new password. But I would actually keep that in mind that if you're not using an English keyboard, like if you're using an Indian keyboard for example, when you write that, make sure that you don't use any special characters. So, what do I mean by that? It asks me for current password. So, I'm just going to give it and hit 'Enter'. It won't show up in here for security reasons. But for the new password, if you give something like a special character, then it would not be recognized when you log in before you wouldn't have changed your keyboard by then. So, make sure you give like a simple, not simple password but simple letters and stuff, or here, if you're not certain that your keyboard is going to work. I know it's not a good password advice to have like a password without special characters, but it's just the way it is. Make sure you know your password and you can log in. Otherwise you had to just delete it and instal it one more time. So, here you go. Now I have typed my new password two times and hit 'Enter. Again, the passwords do not show up for security reasons but it actually writes them. So, make sure you write your password and hit 'Enter'. So, of course, if you want, you can make it as complicated as you want. But again, make sure that your keyboard is actually working while you're logging in the Kali Linux. That's how you change your password. So, if you change your password, if you have learnt all these Linux stuff during this section, then it's okay, then it's great. Of course, there is lot to learn, but I believe we shouldn't turn this into kind of a Linux course. So, since we are learning cybersecurity, since we are learning ethical hacking, we will have much more opportunity to actually exercise these commands. So, we will continue to learn during this course in the upcoming sections anyway. Maybe for the last thing, I can show you the up arrow of things. So, if you write any command inside of the terminal, if you write any command and hit 'Enter' and execute it, then you can reach the same command by hitting on the 'Up Arrow' on your keyboard. It shows you the latest command. And if you just hit it again, you will see the history. Like I'm just going to run clear and if I hit, as you can see, I see the clear, I see the ifconfig. So, this is a trick as well. You can use this as many as you want. Don't forget, you can do tab for auto-completion as well like this. So, this will just increase your speed when you work with terminal. So, we're going to stop here and continue within the next section.

 

About the Author
Students
2086
Courses
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Atil is an instructor at Bogazici University, where he graduated back in 2010. He is also co-founder of Academy Club, which provides training, and Pera Games, which operates in the mobile gaming industry.