Bandit Level 12
Level Goal:
The password for the next level is stored in the file data.txt, which is a hexdump of a file that has been repeatedly compressed. For this level it may be useful to create a directory under /tmp in which you can work using mkdir. For example: mkdir /tmp/myname123. Then copy the datafile using cp, and rename it using mv (read the manpages!)
Commands you may need to solve this level
grep, sort, uniq, strings, base64, tr, tar, gzip, bzip2, xxd, mkdir, cp, mv
Helpful Reading Material
Write-up
Since I was not allowed to create file in the home
directory, I created a directory at /tmp/
. I suggest doing this although its possible to do this with a single well structured command. So here’s what I basically did
bandit12@melinda:~$ mkdir /tmp/break
bandit12@melinda:~$ cp data.txt /tmp/break
bandit12@melinda:~$ cd /tmp/break
bandit12@melinda:/tmp/break$ ls
data.txt
The following is what I actually did
So the given file was a hexdump. I used xxd -r <filename>
to reverse it and sent the output to a file. I kept using file
command at each step to know what I’m tackling.
gzip
compressed files are extracted using gunzip
. But gunzip
extracts files only with certain extension, .gz
being one of them. So I renamed the file to have that extension. bzip2
compressed files are extracted using bzip2 -d <filename>
where -d
flag stands for “decompress”.
For tar
archives I used tar xvf <filename>
.
After repeatedly extracting and re-extracting, I landed upon a file containing ASCII text. That sure containted the password.
If you have a method to automate this stuff to make it easier, please comment below or email me.
Level 13 password: 8ZjyCRiBWFYkneahHwxCv3wb2a1ORpYL
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Bandit Level 11