Level 18

Objectives

  1. SSH to bandit17 using the SSH private key from level 17.
  2. Find the difference between passwords.old and passwords.new resulting in the password from passwords.new.

Objective 1

  • Username: bandit17
  • Password: ssh-private-key
  • Port: 2220
  • IP/Hostname: bandit.labs.overthewire.org
user@localhost:~$ ssh -p 2220 [email protected] -i bandit17.rsa

Success!

Objective 2

To find the difference between the files, all we need to use is the diff command.

bandit17@bandit:~$ diff passwords.new passwords.old 
42c42
< kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd
---
> hlbSBPAWJmL6WFDb06gpTx1pPButblOA

To interpret this, the diff command uses < and > to indicate which file it came from, based on how you ran the command.

For example, the first file, or the file on the left in my command was the passwords.new file, so the arrow < indicates that the kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd is what changed in that file, while in the passwords.old, the hlbSBPAWJmL6WFDb06gpTx1pPButblOA changed.

The goal was to find what changed in the passwords.new file, so the password is kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd.