Hacking Skills Challenge-Level 3

My most recent post, Hacker Skills Help Save a Client’s PC, is a real-life practical example of how honing (or developing) your hacking skills can help you better serve your clients. So if you haven’t gotten around to it yet, mosey on over to HackThisSite.org, create an account and get started on the basic missions. They’re pretty simple, but if you don’t know a thing about hacking, you’ll be challenged.

Did you figure out level 3 of the HackThisSite.org Basic Missions? Here’s the mission:

This time Network Security Sam remembered to upload the password file, but there were deeper problems than that.

Recall that Sam forgot the password file the last time and so the script that checked for the file returned a <null> value—a blank password. This time, he remembered to upload the password file, which, if you look at the source code for the page, is password.php. In the last challenge, we were told that the password file was not encrypted. I wonder if we can open password.php? Let’s copy the URL of the challenge page and append “password.php” to it: http://www.hackthissite.org/missions/basic/3/password.php. Voila! The page opens, revealing 792debbc as the password.

Mission accomplished.