Mission 0x38

🔎 Solution

Once logged in as julie, the next objective hinted at comparing differences:

julie@venus:~$ cat mission.txt 
################
# MISSION 0x38 #
################

## EN ##
The user irene believes that the beauty is in the difference.

In the home directory, 2 files were provided: 1.txt and 2.txt. Since the hint suggested a difference, the logical approach was to compare them using diff.

julie@venus:~$ diff 1.txt 2.txt 
174c174
< 8VeRLEFkBpe2DSD
---
> aNHRdohjOiNizlU

The output showed that only a single line differed. That meant one of these strings had to be the password. Testing them revealed the correct one:

8VeRLEFkBpe2DSD

With that, I could access the next account:

ssh irene@venus.hackmyvm.eu -p 5000

Inside the home directory, the flag was stored in the usual location:

irene@venus:~$ cat flagz.txt 
8===c9hgLkLGzsNw7mB3VEr4===D~~

🚩Flag

8===c9hgLkLGzsNw7mB3VEr4===D~~