10
F I L E S Y S T E M A N D S T O R A G E
D E V I C E M A N A G E M E N T
If you are coming from a Windows envi-
ronment, the
way that Linux represents
and manages storage devices will look
rather different to you. You’ve already seen
that the filesystem has no physical representation of
the drive, like the
C:,
D:, or
E: system in Windows,
but rather has
a file tree structure with / at the top,
or
root, of it. This chapter takes a look at how Linux
represents storage devices such as hard drives, flash
drives, and other storage devices.
We first look how additional drives and other storage devices are
mounted upon that filesystem,
leading up to the / (root) directory.
Mounting in this context simply means attaching drives or disks to the
filesystem to make them accessible to the operating system (OS). For you
as a hacker, it’s necessary to understand the file and storage device manage-
ment system, both on your own system and, often, the system of your target.
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Chapter 10
Hackers commonly use
external media to load data, hacking tools, or even
their OS. Once you’re on your target system, you need to understand what
you’re
working with, where to find confidential or other critical files, how to
mount a drive to the target, and whether and where you can put those files
on your system.
We cover all of these topics, plus how to manage and moni-
tor storage devices, in this chapter.
We begin with the directory known as
/dev, which you’ve probably
already noticed in the directory structure:
dev is
short for device, and every
device in Linux is represented by its own file within the
/dev directory. Let’s
start out by working with
/dev.
