Shall We Begin? >:-)

I am going to be writing a series of posts detailing the methods used by me to go through the Overthewire Bandit Wargames.

Pre-requisites for Bandit Wargames

1. Being able to ssh into the Bandit machines

   If you have a Linux/MacOS machine, the default ssh client should suffice.

   If you have a Windows machine, most people would recommend installing PuTTy. But I wouldn't. Going through these CTFs will involve a lot of work on the Linux command line. Therefore I'd recommend installing either VirtualBox or VMWare, and then installing Ubuntu and getting familiar with it.

   There are plenty of tutorials on getting an Ubuntu VM up and running. Google it and try it out. Its worth it. Once you get a VM up and running, you'll be patting yourself on the back.

   After installing your VM, go through a Linux command line crash course. I guarantee that it will come in handy during the Wargames.

2. Linking to Wechall

   For me, the most fun part of the CTFs is to track my progress and know my "score". For this I use Wechall

   Shameless Plug aka My Profile on Wechall :D

   The steps to link Wechall are here => http://overthewire.org/information/wechall.html

   Wechall will come in handy, as they have links to a lot of other CTF sites as well, allowing you to show off your progress on all of them.

3. Patience

   There will be a LOT of frustration involved, as it's a lot harder to get the flags on the later Bandit machines. But believe me when I say this, you will enjoy every bit of the challenge, and all the stuff you learned along the way.

   For each walk-through, I'm not going to post the solution straightaway. I will try to provide hints to encourage you to derive the solution on your own.

   This style is inspired by the similar walkthrough series written by The Bresleveloper.

   No one is perfect, so yes sometimes after you are stuck, you may look at the solution. But only do this after you are confident that you have tried your best and are stuck.

   Remember => The objective is to learn, not to compare yourself to others

And that is it for the pre-requisites. Now. let us begin.