Metadata

Cybersecurity Linux Lesson 1.2.3

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Metadata

Users will learn how data is cataloged in most Linux
systems.

• Linux uses metadata to help us understand the differences between files of the same type
• Some examples include:
  • The title, artist, and album of a song in an .mp3
  • The creation data, file size, and resolution of a photo in a .jpg
  • The GPS coordinates of a geotagged image.
  • The hashtags associated with a social media post.
  • The keywords used to describe a website.

Metadata - Example

Picture yourself in a library looking for a book about dinosaurs, looking up and down every aisle until you finally find it.
• Instead, you could search the catalog for “dinosaurs”
• The catalog is database of information about books containing:
• Titles
• Authors
• Subjects
• And more

Metadata - Commands

stat • Prints out the status of Linux files, directories, and file systems
• Includes information regarding files, directories and file systems such as their sizes, blocks, inodes, permissions, and timestamps for modification

file
• Determines the file type, ignoring the extension used for file
• Different extensions can be used on a file either accidently or maliciously