OverTheWire Bandit Level 0 -> Level 1

The password for the next level is stored in a file called readme located in the home directory. Use this password to log into bandit1 using SSH. Whenever you find a password for a level, use SSH (on port 2220) to log into that level and continue the game.

I highly recommend using a virtual machine or, even better, a Docker container running Linux when doing these challenges, and really any other CTFs like this. This helps to avoid messing anything up on your host machine. Though this is just a recommendation, not a requirement. If you’re interested in using Docker for this, I created a gist with a Dockerfile and instructions on running it.

For all of the levels in Bandit, you’ll need to know how to connect to a host through ssh. Here’s the connection information for all the levels in Bandit:

Host: bandit.labs.overthewire.org
Port: 2220

Connecting to this host with ssh is very simple:

ssh bandit.labs.overthewire.org -p 2220 -l bandit0

We use -p to set the port number and -l to set the username. For this level, the username is bandit0. The username will always be in this format, with the 0 changing to 1, 2, 3, etc, depending on the level.

Once you execute this command, you may be presented with a message stating the authenticity of the host can’t be established and a question asking Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?, go ahead and type yes. You shouldn’t have to do this every time. You’ll then need to enter the password which they give you: bandit0. If everything was correct, you’ll now be logged in and ready to start working on the level.

According to the level description, we have to look in the readme file for the next level’s password. To make sure the file is actually within our current working directory, we can run ls to get a list of the files and directories. This will confirm that a readme file is indeed present. Now to print out the contents of that file we can make use of the cat command: cat readme. The password for the next level (Level 1) will be displayed and you can move on to the next level.

I highly recommend you keep a document of all of the passwords you find, just in case you ever need to go back to a previous level.