Bandit10->11

Level Goal

The password for the next level is stored in the file data.txt, which contains base64 encoded data.

Commands useful to solve the level

• base64
• file Optional
• head Optional

Helpful Reading Material

• Base64
• Base64-encoding
• What is the base64 encoding used for StackOverflow discussion

Where to start?

By running file on our file data.txt, we know that our file contains ASCII text we can now safely work with it. We know from the Level Goal that our file contains base64 encoded data. Let's first run head on our file
You should get an output close to this one :

VGhlIHBhc3N3b3JkIGlzIHBhc3N3b3JkX3N0cmluZwo=

As the solution is pretty straightforward I will give it right away, however it will still be hidden if you want to search by yourself first. Go and check the base64 gnu documentation page to see if you can find how to decode our password string.

Full Solution

We will use the option -d (decode) of the base64 utility.
Thus, running the following command :

base64 -d data.txt

will print a string which should look like this one : The password is password_string to stdout.

You can now jump to the next level