OverTheWire Bandit Level 6 Level 7 walk-through

Challenge page => https://overthewire.org/wargames/bandit/bandit7.html

The password for the next level is stored somewhere on the server and has all of the following properties:

owned by user bandit7
owned by group bandit6
33 bytes in size

This challenge is very similar to the last one, the only difference being that we will have to search the entire filesystem.

We already know from the last challenge that using the find command is the best way to go about this.

Once again, what flags of the find command are required to search for this file?

Hint 1: Searching the man page will be enough to get the flags required

Alright then. After searching the man page, we have found the flags.

• -user bandit7
• -group bandit6
• -size 33c

Since the file is "somewhere on the server", we will have to run the search from the root / directory.

So the final command would be

find / -user bandit7 -group bandit6 -size 33c

Let's execute it then

Be warned, since the user we used to log in is not root, the find command will visit a lot of directories which the bandit6 user does not the permissions to read. So we will encounter a lot of errors.

How do we get the errors out of the way so that we get a "clean" result?

Hint 2: A few web searches should yield a result. Read up on streams and I/O redirection

If you couldn't figure that out, its ok!

An easy way to get the errors out of the way is to send them to /dev/null as follows.

Looks like we got it!

What I did there was redirect the "stderr" stream to /dev/null, basically discarding it, and therefore ensuring that it does not get printed on the terminal.

Couple of articles to understand this better

• What Are stdin, stdout, and stderr on Linux?

• An Introduction to Linux I/O Redirection

• What Is /dev/null in Linux?

Being comfortable with I/O redirection is an important part of being comfortable with the command line. Don't be afraid to get your hands dirty.

Note: A lot of programs will send useful error info to stderr in case of failure. So when debugging, and especially if there are a ton of error messages, it is common practice to redirect stderr to a file so that you can go through it later to figure out what happened.

Onto the next challenge!