Level Instructions:

“There are 2 files in the homedirectory: passwords.old and passwords.new. The password for the next level is in passwords.new and is the only line that has been changed between passwords.old and passwords.new

NOTE: if you have solved this level and see ‘Byebye!’ when trying to log into bandit18, this is related to the next level, bandit19.”

bandit17@bandit:~$ ls -la
total 40
drwxr-xr-x  3 root     root     4096 Dec 28  2017 .
drwxr-xr-x 42 root     root     4096 Jul 22 18:42 ..
-rw-r-----  1 bandit17 bandit17   33 Dec 28  2017 .bandit16.password
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root      220 Sep  1  2015 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root     3771 Sep  1  2015 .bashrc
-rw-r--r--  1 root     root      655 Jun 24  2016 .profile
drwxr-xr-x  2 root     root     4096 Dec 28  2017 .ssh
-rw-r-----  1 bandit17 bandit17 1704 Dec 28  2017 .ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
-rw-r-----  1 bandit18 bandit17 3300 Dec 28  2017 passwords.new
-rw-r-----  1 bandit18 bandit17 3300 Dec 28  2017 passwords.old
bandit17@bandit:~$ diff passwords.old passwords.new
42c42
< 6vcSC74ROI95NqkKaeEC2ABVMDX9TyUr
---
> kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd

Using the ‘diff’ command we can compare the contents of passwords.old and passwords.new.

The command will print the comparable differences between the files, revealing line ‘ kfBf3eYk5BPBRzwjqutbbfE887SVc5Yd ‘; our password for bandit18.