Overview

Project Information
OverTheWire (Bandit - General Skills)

Progress

• Finished "Bandit" of OverTheWire

Project Links

• Github - Writeup

Useful Links

• Wargames are actually different from CTFs! [Reddit Post]

** POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD! **

Reflection

Day 1 (up to "Level 10 → Level 11"):

• Writing the Writeups while playing is very slow. Probably because I am being very detailed. Once I start participating in live competitions where the competitions are timed, this process will need to be sped up. I might need to figure out how to more efficiently document. Maybe it is time to convert to complete mouseless-ness (is that even possible on a mac?!)

• The questions have started shifting towards more network-related concepts, ie port scanning, nmap, ssh. I did another network deep-dive in order to review major concepts/vocabulary. Since I've already researched most of the concepts before here, many of the topics I came across again were easier to understand this time around. It's a small victory to have realized that I retained some knowledge from the past Project 100 projects. Yay!
• The problem I've enjoyed the most today was the one involving multi-layer data decompression. It was super fun to play with different filetypes and learn about different decompression commands.

• Despite knowing how to work through them now, I'm still very confused about setuid executables..
• First time writing a bash script and daemon! One small step for Sabina, one big step towards less headaches for future Sabina.
• Trying to work around file permissions is a headache..
• Git questions appear in wargames??

Lessons Learned

1. Regex and bash commands are hard, but rewarding and very useful when understood.
2. Embrace the confusion. You know what you know; you don't know what you don't know. It has been a while since I felt the feeling of complete and utter loss and confusion when presented with a new problem. That was how I felt for the majority of questions involving daemons and file permissions. However when we got to git-related questions, I blew through the levels very quickly, because I was already familiar with the concepts presented. That's just how it goes! It's normal to be confused when seeing a new problem for the first time! The great thing is that the next time a similar problem appears, we have the tools and experience to more easily work through it after figuring it out this time!