OverTheWire: Bandit Level 17 to Level 18

Level goal: There are 2 files in the homedirectory: passwords.old and passwords.new. The password for the next level is in passwords.newand is the only line that has been changed between passwords.old and passwords.new

NOTE: if you have solved this level and see ‘Byebye!’ when trying to log into bandit18, this is related to the next level, bandit19.

Here you see 2 password files. As the hint goes, New vs Old, the first thing to come to mind is to perform the diff function.

[email protected]:~$ diff passwords.new passwords.old
42c42
< kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd
---
> BS8bqB1kqkinKJjuxL6k072Qq9NRwQpR

The password is kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd. To verify whether this is the correct password, we will follow the hint, which is to try to connect to bandit18 and see if we see the “Byebye!” message.

The password to gain access to the next level is kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd.