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Exiftool Walkthrough

The document discusses using Exiftool, a command line application, to extract metadata from files. It provides steps to set up a shared folder between a host computer and a Kali Linux virtual machine, install Exiftool, and use it to view metadata from sample files.

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Richard Huynh
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31 views3 pages

Exiftool Walkthrough

The document discusses using Exiftool, a command line application, to extract metadata from files. It provides steps to set up a shared folder between a host computer and a Kali Linux virtual machine, install Exiftool, and use it to view metadata from sample files.

Uploaded by

Richard Huynh
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Extracting Metadata

Extracting Metadata
Exiftool is a platform independent command line and GUI application for reading, writing
and editing meta information of files and images. Although platform independent, for this
practical we will be using our Kali Linux Operating system through VirtualBox.

As we have already covered, Metadata information can be GPS coordinates, tags, creation
time, edit time, device name, owner etc. Use the document provided and follow the below
steps to extract information from the document.

Step 1: Adding a Shared Folder with Kali

Create a folder on the Desktop of your computer and name it: Kali Share – or similar!

Open VirtualBox, select your Kali Operating System on the left and go to settings.

Navigate to the shared folders Tab and click the folder with the green plus symbol.

In the folder path field, navigate to the folder that you have created and select the options for
Auto-mount and Make Permanent options if available.
Extracting Metadata

Download the file that you have been given for the Metadata practical and place it in the new
folder that you have created.

Step 2:

Start you Kali Linux operating system through VirtualBox and log in using Username: kali
and password: kali.

In order to use the shared folder that we have created on our Desktop while we are in the Kali
OS we need to log in as the “root”, administrator (superuser) to have the permissions to
access the folder. We need to create a superuser, root, password. To do this we will open a
terminal window and run the command sudo su and then enter the password: kali when
prompted.

We will then use command passwd root to tell it that we want to change the root password.
It will the ask you for a new root password and then to repeat that password. You can see this
in the image below.

Log out of Kali Linux and log back in with Username: root and the password that you have
just set. You will now be logged in as the root user and be able to access the new shared
folder. When you open this folder, you will be able to see the files that you place in the
folder.
Extracting Metadata

Step 3:

To make life a little easier later on, copy and paste this file into your root directory and
rename the file Meta.txt – this can be done by right clicking on the file and selecting
“rename”.

Step 4:

Open a terminal window in Kali and install the exiftool using the sudo apt-get install
exiftool as shown the image below:

Type Y when prompted to install the tool.

Step 5:

Type exiftool Meta.txt into the terminal to extract the metadata from the document
What information can you find?

Step 6:

Find other documents from the internet in different formats, add them to the kali shared
folder on your desktop and repeat the process to see what interesting information you can
find.

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