OverTheWire Bandit: Level 5-9

Below are my solutions to Bandit level 5 to 9 continuing from Level 0-4. Let’s get started~!!

Level 5

Task

Below is the task for Level 5.

Find the password that is stored in the only file in the "inhere" directory that is human-readable.

My Solution

First, I ran the following commands to list all the files in the “inhere” directory.

ls
cd inhere
ls -a

In the “inhere” directory, there were ten files named “-file00” to “-file09”. To find the human-readable file, the type of each file must be known.

file ./*

The command above allowed me to identify the ASCII text file. With the password, I was able to move on to the next level.

Takeaways

The key command that I learned in this level is “file”. Running file myfile will identify the file type of “myfile”.

Level 6

Task

Below is the task for Level 6.

Find the password that is stored in a file in "inhere" directory that is human-readable, 1033 bytes in size, and not executable. 

My Solution

First, I decided to list all files in “inhere” directory.

cd inhere
ls -a

Here, I was thrown into 20 directories. Inside each directory, multiple files existed. In other words, the level is not intended to be solved with manual inspection of each file. Therefore, I ran the following command to narrow down the choices.

file -size 1033c

where c is for bytes. The command provided me exactly one file with the password.

Takeaways

Without manually inspecting each file, it is possible to find multiple properties of files with file command. Moreover, it is significant to optimize all the information provided by the prompt to make our lives easier.

Level 7

Task

Below is the task for Level 7.

Find the password that is stored in the server, owned by user bandit7, owned by group bandit6, and 33 bytes in size.

My Solution

After running ls -a in the directory, ., .., .bash_logout, .bashrc, and .profile were listed. Therefore, du -b .* was used to list the following information.

220      .bash_logout
3851     .bashrc
807      .profile

None of the files were 33 bytes in size. In other words no comments in the files are likely to contain the password. In order to utilize the word “server”, I travelled to the higher directory with cd ...

Takeaways

Level 8

Task

Below is the task for Level 8.

My Solution

Takeaways

Level 9

Task

Below is the task for Level 9.

My Solution

Takeaways