Exploring OverTheWire: Level 4 to Level 5 - Bandit Challenge

Introduction

As we progress in the Bandit Challenge, Level 5 ↗️ introduces us to the concept of human-readable files. Our objective is to locate and extract the password stored within the only file in the “inhere” directory that is readable by humans.

Challenge Overview:

By utilizing commands like file, ls and cat we’ll navigate the file system, examine file contents, and retrieve the password.

Approach and Strategy

Follow these steps to successfully solve Level 5:

ssh [email protected] -p 2220

Enter the password you obtained from the previous level.

Once logged in, navigate to the “inhere” directory using the cd command:

cd inhere

This allows us to change our working directory.

Display the files and directories within the “inhere” directory using the ls command:

ls -l

This will provide a list of files and directories within the current directory.

Among the listed files, we need to identify the only human-readable file. Human-readable files typically contain plain text that can be easily read by humans.

One approach to identifying the human-readable file is to use the file command. Run the following command:

file ./*

This will display the file types and information for all the files in the directory. The response would look something like this

./-file00: data
./-file01: data
./-file02: data
./-file03: data
./-file04: data
./-file05: data
./-file06: data
./-file07: ASCII text
./-file08: data
./-file09: Non-ISO extended-ASCII text, with no line terminators

Look for the file that has a type indicating it is human-readable, such as “ASCII text” or “UTF-8 Unicode text”. These types suggest that the file contains readable text.

From above response we see the file "./-file07" is of format “ASCII text”.

To view the contents of this file, use the cat command:

cat ./-file07

The password for Level 5 will be displayed in the output. Take note of it for the next level.

Note: If your terminal becomes distorted during the process, use the reset command to restore it to the default settings.

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Notes

• Human-readable files contain text that can be easily read by humans. We can use file ↗️ command to get details about the file.
• If your terminal becomes distorted, use the “reset” command to restore it.

Conclusion

Congratulations on successfully completing Level 5 of the Bandit Challenge! By exploring the file system and identifying the human-readable file within the “inhere” directory, we obtained the password necessary to progress further.

Stay tuned for the next blog post, where we’ll embark on Level 6 and face new challenges in our quest to become cybersecurity experts.