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–– Meeting 2 —

Linux Workshops

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Attendance

WELCOME!

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Updates

US Bank Cincinnati Visit (This Friday, 2/21)

  • Tour of US Bank’s Cyber Headquarters
  • Tour is 9am - 2pm (Leave Oxford at 8am)
  • Learn about Prevention & Detection at a large bank
  • Tour of Federal Reserve’s cash vault

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Email Brian Ballou (balloubj@miamioh.edu) by TONIGHT if interested

  • He can provide excused absence letter for classes as needed

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Information Systems & Analytics Organization Collab Meeting

  • Date TBD

Attendance

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Dividing the Room

Intro Linux Workshop (Right)

Intended for those who have little experience using Linux Systems

Reinforcing Linux basics

Scavenger Hunt

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Advanced Linux w/ Dr. Walden (Left)

Topic: How different commands interact with the kernel

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Linux Intro and Scavenger Hunt

Evan Ellsworth

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What is Linux

Umbrella term for multiple OS

  • Open-source
  • Unix-like

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Key Features

  • Stable & Secure
  • Highly Customizable (Ubuntu, kali, etc.)
  • Used everywhere (Servers, IoT)

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Why do we use it?

Security

Industry Standard

CLI Power

Flexibility

Reliability

Lightweight

Small

Open Source

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Comparison to MacOS and Windows

  • Fewer Vulnerabilities
    • Rare that malware targets Linux systems
  • Open source
    • Public gets to review code themselves, barring vulnerabilities from going undiscovered for long periods of time
  • Performance & Efficiency
    • Lightweight
    • Over 90% of cloud infrastructure is based on Linux systems
  • Free
  • Small
    • Ubuntu: 4-6GB
      • Even smaller versions exist like Arch (<1GB)
    • Windows 11: 20-30GB
    • macOS Sonoma: 14-20GB

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Distributions

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Terminal

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Filesystem

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Commands

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Scavenger Hunt

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How to Participate

  1. Come write down your Miami ID at the front so I can create an account for you on the openstack instance
  2. Login to the server
    1. Open powershell and type “ssh (Your Miami ID)@172.17.184.46”
    2. Password for all accounts is mucsc
  3. Start by typing “cat welcome.txt” in your home directory
  4. Work at your own pace if you want, but I will also provide solutions as we go
  5. If you have any trouble please let me know

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Challenge #1

  1. Discover there is a super secret directory titled secret in your home directory
  2. “cd secret”
  3. “ls”
  4. “cat challenge1.txt”

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Now, I’ll give a minute to attempt Challenge #2

Hint: “ls -a” will show you hidden files

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Challenge #2

  1. Files can be hidden from a normal “ls” by putting a period in front of the name.
  2. Type “ls -a” in the secret folder
  3. Find and display the text to .challenge2.txt

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Now, I’ll give a minute to attempt Challenge #3

Hint: It’s time to leave home

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Challenge #3

  • Navigate to /tmp (cd /tmp)
  • Discover and display challenge3.txt (cat challenge3.txt)

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Now, I’ll give a minute to attempt Challenge #4 (Medium)

Hint: Head over to /var/log/ and use the grep command to search for a special line in auth.log

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Challenge #4

  • Navigate to /var/log (cd /var/log)
  • grep challenge auth.log

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Now, I’ll give a minute to attempt Challenge #5 (Finale)

Hint: Hint: Looks like this server is poorly configured. Try to locate where the admin stores his password, decrypt it, and login as administrator.

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Challenge #5

  • Navigate to /home/administrator/personal/notes/
  • ls -a
  • Discover .dontforgetpasswordagain.txt
  • Decrypt base64 using base64 -d .dontforgetpasswordagain.txt
  • You’ve found the admin’s credentials. Log out of the server and log into the admin’s account if you want.

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