When we talk about Linux security, tools like curl, wget, locate, and even advanced scripting techniques such as Bash heredocs are incredibly useful for automation and system administration. But no matter how skilled you are with downloading packages, searching binaries, or writing scripts, your system’s integrity can still be compromised by something far more dangerous: a rootkit.
In this in-depth guide, I’ll walk you through how to detect and check for rootkits using two classic and battle-tested tools: chkrootkit and rkhunter (Rootkit Hunter)
This article covers installation, configuration, interpretation of results, automation, and practical security strategies across major Linux distributions.