CLI Encoding and Decoding Commands for Penetration Testing

Common commands for encoding and decoding text, base64 and hex from the command line.

Encoded strings show up constantly in loot, config files and captured traffic. These are the conversions I reach for most often to make sense of them.

Encode

1
# Convert text from UTF-8 to UTF-16LE, then to base64 (useful for values that need to match Windows' native string encoding)
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echo -n "example|value|here" | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16LE | base64 -w 0

Decode

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cat encoded_file | base64 -d   # Decode base64

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cat hex_file | xxd -r -p   # Convert hex back to text

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python -c "print(HEX_value)"   # Convert hex to decimal

CLI Encoding & Decoding

Encode

Decode