Definition
Globbing refers to a technique for requesting or evaluating files based on wildcard characters (asterisks and question marks). This enables you to broaden your search for unspecified file names.
An example of globbing is using an asterisk to match a sequence of characters and a question mark to identify a specific unnamed character. You can use globbing to match filenames or search for file content.
Globbing Examples
- (*) – Search for all files in the current directory
- “*.html” – Search for all files ending in ‘.html’
- “*notes*” – Search for all files with ‘notes’ in their name
- “../*” – Find all files in the parent directory
- “*wise*” – Find all files that include the word ‘wise’ in their name
Globbing in Hacking
Hackers can use globbing to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. Since globbing may require significant resources to search for multiple files, creating malicious globbing commands can strain server resources.