I have a

file

query that I would like to be able to recurse directories that begin with a '.' (hidden), but I can't figure out the right magic incantation for the life of me. For example, if you run this to prepare the test:

mkdir -p /tmp/.out/.omg && cp /bin/ls /tmp/.out/.omg

You can find this file in osquery using:

SELECT path FROM file WHERE file.directory = '/tmp/.out/.omg';

But how would I find it without knowing what subdirectories in /tmp that it's part of? Ideally I'd love '/tmp/%%' to have returned it, but it doesn't include directories that begin with a dot. This also returns zero result:

SELECT path FROM file WHERE file.directory = '/tmp/.%/.%';

As does:

SELECT path FROM file WHERE file.directory = '/tmp/.out/.o%';

macOS & Linux both behave similarly, using osquery 5.7.0.

:thinks: Yeah, I recall some conversation, somewhere, about how it doesn’t traverse through the dot directories. I don’t know if there’s a workaround.

Funny enough, the issue was fully between the seat and the keyboard. I accidentally switched to using

=

instead of

LIKE

when doing the hidden directory tests. This works:

SELECT path FROM file
WHERE
file.directory LIKE '/tmp/.%/.%'
AND NOT file.directory LIKE '%/../%'
AND NOT file.directory LIKE '%/./%';

It's awkward to add the second two filters, but otherwise you end up with a lot of weird content entries, like

/tmp/././out

and

/tmp/../../etc

I can’t really absorb this, but I wonder if you’d do better with a regex there.