OverTheWire — Leviathan Writeups & Concepts

This repository contains my complete writeups for the Leviathan wargame, the next step after Bandit in OverTheWire.
Leviathan focuses on early-stage binary exploitation, privilege escalation, symbolic link attacks, and brute-force automation.

🔧 Levels solved: leviathan0 → leviathan7
🎯 Goal: bridge the gap between shell fundamentals (Bandit) and binary exploitation basics

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🛠 Skills Demonstrated

• SUID binary behavior & misuse
• Tracing binaries using ltrace and strace
• Extracting embedded secrets with strings
• Symbolic link exploitation (ln -s) to redirect access
• Handling tricky filenames to bypass logic
• Brute-forcing limited keyspaces (4-digit password)
• Restricted shell → privilege escalation progression
• Reading password files via escalated execution context

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🧪 Core Cybersecurity Concepts

Concept	Explanation
SUID privilege execution	Binaries can run as another user, including privileged users
Symbolic link attacks	Re-routing file operations through symlinks to expose secrets
Hardcoded passwords	Credentials embedded in binaries are discoverable via tracing
Input handling weaknesses	Spaces in paths & missing validations lead to escalation risks
Brute force feasibility	Small search spaces (~10k combos) are computationally trivial
Binary observation	Behavior analysis often reveals more than static analysis

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📌 Why Leviathan matters

From	To
Shell comfort (Bandit)	Binary exploitation awareness
Command execution	Program behavior analysis
Reading files	Manipulating execution flow
Theory of privilege escalation	Practical escalation & exploitation

This progression is extremely relevant for:

• CTFs
• reverse engineering
• privilege escalation labs
• junior pentesting roles

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🤝 Contributions / Feedback

If you're working through Leviathan and want help:

• open an issue 📌
• suggest improvements 💡