OverTheWire Bandit: Level 1 → Level 2

The Goal

The password is stored in a file called - in the home directory.

What I Did

Logged in as bandit1 and ran ls to confirm the file was there:

bandit1@bandit:~$ ls
-

One file named -. I tried reading it the same way as last level:

bandit1@bandit:~$ cat -

Nothing happened. The terminal just sat there waiting. I pressed Ctrl+C to cancel out of it.

I opened the man page for cat to figure out why, then searched online for “dashed filename” as the level hinted. That gave me the answer.

The fix:

bandit1@bandit:~$ cat ./-

That printed the password.

What Was Actually Happening

- is a special character in Linux. When you pass - to most commands, it means “read from standard input” — your keyboard — instead of a file. So cat - wasn’t looking for a file at all. It was waiting for me to type something, which is why the terminal froze. Ctrl+C sends an interrupt signal that kills the running process.

The fix is ./ — which means “current directory.” So ./- means “the file named - inside the current directory.” By giving cat a path instead of a bare name, the shell treats it unambiguously as a filename and not a flag.

This works for any filename starting with a special character. The same logic applies if a file starts with -- or any other character the shell might misinterpret.

What Ctrl+C Does

Worth noting since I used it here. Ctrl+C sends a SIGINT signal — interrupt — to the currently running process. It’s the standard way to cancel a command that’s stuck or running longer than you want. You’ll use it constantly.

What I Learned

- means stdin to most Unix commands. It’s a convention, not a rule — commands choose to respect it — but almost all of them do.

./ provides an explicit path. Instead of a bare name the shell might misinterpret, you give it a path that starts with the current directory. Unambiguous.

Ctrl+C kills a running process. Sends SIGINT. The process can catch and handle it, but most commands just exit.

Commands Used

Command	What it did
ls	Confirmed the file - exists
cat -	Froze — treated - as stdin, not a filename
Ctrl+C	Cancelled the stuck command
man cat	Checked the manual to understand the - behaviour
cat ./-	Read the file correctly using an explicit path