Bandit Level 5 -> Level 6

• Platform: OverTheWire
• Wargame: Bandit
• Date: 2025-12-13 00:28

Overview

Bandit Level 5: The password for Level 6 is stored in a file named .file2 in the ~/inhere/maybehere07 directory.

The inhere directory contains 20 folders, and inside each folder are a list of files.

The goal is to identify the file with these attributes:

human-readable
1033 bytes in size
not executable

Connection:

Host: bandit.labs.overthewire.org
Port: 2220
User: bandit5
Password: (use the password from Level 4's -file07 file)

Steps

1. SSH into the server as bandit5

(enter the password you found in Level 4 when prompted)

2. Identify the text file in ~/inhere

inhere/maybehere07/.file2: ASCII text, with very long lines (1000)

This confirms that .file2 is the wanted file.

3. Read the contents of .file2

Because the filename starts with ., one might need to use TAB completion:

(password for bandit6)

Alternatively: find . -type f -size 1033c ! -executable simply ran can find the file too.

The output is the password for Bandit Level 6. Use it to continue with ssh bandit6@bandit.labs.overthewire.org -p 2220.

Summary

• The password is stored in a file named .file2 inside the inhere directory, which has 20 directories. Identify the correct file and use cat to read its contents, taking care to handle the leading dash (.) in the filename.
• Use find together with file to locate the text file among the all directories & files (e.g., find inhere -type f ! -executable -size 1033c -exec file {} \;).
• Optional: Use grep to search/check if file is a text file.