Basic Mission 7

[davidnguyen2281]

I have just pass this mission. I think Sam should escape user string before pass it to unix command. In PHP, Sam can use use escapeshellarg() or escapeshellcmd()? everyone have ideals?

[rephy2]

Did anyone figure out how i got 2 different passwords?¿

[fashizzlepop]

Might be a small bug. Can you reproduce it? If so, PM mShred.

Edit: So rephy2 used wget in terminal to retrieve the password file instead of his browser. This gave him a string that was not correct. When accessing it from the browser, the site knew who he was (due to cookies/session etc.) and therefore spit out the correct string.

[mShred]

Edit: So rephy2 used wget in terminal to retrieve the password file instead of his browser. This gave him a string that was not correct. When accessing it from the browser, the site knew who he was (due to cookies/session etc.) and therefore spit out the correct string.

I actually like his method of thinking. But yeah, with that process he'd be leaving out the cookies and sessions with a bare wget.

[Threethumb]

Could anyone point me towards, or possibly write, a description of which parts of the programming and coding languages I should be learning? Learning the entire language for a basic mission seems excessive, and if I am to cut out something, I don't at all know which parts I don't need to learn (yet). It'd be nice to have a pointer towards which specific things I should go read about. Much of what I've done has just been using logic, and I've arrived to mission seven without really understanding what I did right in the other missions, so it feels like I've gone from difficulty level 2 to 67 in one leap.

Basically, the first two missions were almost painfully simplistic, and didn't require any effort. At number three, I decided to go through all those recommended HTML "lessons" on W3C. So it quickly dawned on me what I exactly had to do in order to find the place with the password (although one detail didn't make sense to me, but I won't specify for spoilers sake). Number 4 and 5, really confused me, because I managed number 4 by using a trick I know in FireFox with which I can "do something" with the source code, to put it like that. But the thing is: although 5 was supposed to have increased security, the same trick worked. So obviously I haven't learned what I need to learn, as I don't know what I did right and/or wrong. Number 6 was more or less just back to using common sense again, and now I'm here at 7, I have no idea what I'm looking at, and I'm told I need to go learn an entire other language for this 1 basic mission.

I'd really appreciate someone telling me about more than the articles and tutorials about what exactly I need to learn in order to understand a mission, and preferably someone to assist me in understanding exactly why I got things right in those other missions. Additionally, I'd just like to say that the two different articles, both tutorials for missions 1-10, were a big part of me not understanding what I did right. I felt they gave too many hints about what to do, so when I figured out a way to do things, I didn't understand how it really worked, I was just following instructions.

[fashizzlepop]

HTML, some very basic Unix command line stuff, and knowing the difference between server side and client side. PM if you have some more specific questions that you don't want to post openly about (spoilers, etc.)

As for the difference between 4 and 5, 4 can be completed a different way but the solution for 5 works for both.

[Amazingred]

Okay step way back and start off pretending you know nothing about nothing....the first thing you always need to find out is what the objective is. Look at what you've been told.

"This time Network Security sam has saved the unencrypted level7 password in an obscurely named file saved in this very directory."

I'm not going to highlight it, that would be too much of a giveaway, but there is something VERY important in that statement that once you see it will be a big hint as to what specific ability you'll be doing.

Think about it like this; up to now you have been finding the solutions by following this kind of logic:
1. Find out WHAT you are looking for
2. find out WHERE it is located
3. find out how to NAVIGATE there

2 of those things have already been given to you and you'll need to do some exploring to gather some more information to figure out the other one. hope that helps

[Threethumb]

HTML, some very basic Unix command line stuff, and knowing the difference between server side and client side. PM if you have some more specific questions that you don't want to post openly about (spoilers, etc.)

As for the difference between 4 and 5, 4 can be completed a different way but the solution for 5 works for both.

Client side and server side seems to be pretty obvious distinctions to me, so that's already down... I'll look at basic Unix commands then. Also, I'll PM you about the things I wondered about 3,4 and 5

[corbonium]

Ok i have the filename... i have tried using it as the password with and without the file extension, and i keep getting invalid password messages... whats up? do i need to also open this like its a plain text file and perhaps the contents is the password..?

edit: yep, i'm an idiot. In the future if I figure out a crucial step and I'm thinking "what do i do now?!" i will think about it for 5 minutes before posting a dumb question.

[DaMoNarch]

Think of the input box for the year as one line of code. The year is one piece of code. It's probably taken and put through a function to give the calendar. However, you want to execute another command. As you may have learned, you can't put just the command you want in the box--it only works if you put in a year. What you have to do is make both happen at once. How?

(if you're still stuck, read my first sentence again)

Excellent hint. Thanks.
I had no idea you could do that on a web page.

I take it that most web admins would fix it so that this wouldn't work.