Ghost Track - Lvl 4: Access Denied

This level teaches you about Linux permissions and groups. Not every user can read every file, but you might belong to a group that has the necessary access.

Check the map.txt file in your home directory. It tells you that /var/intel/ops/ is restricted to the analysts group.

Try to list the files in that directory:

ls -la /var/intel/ops/

You'll see files like access_codes.dat. If you try to cat it and get "Permission Denied," you need to check who you are.

Run the id command:

id

Look at the groups= section. You'll see that your user (ghost3) is part of the analysts group. Because the file /var/intel/ops/access_codes.dat has read permissions for the group analysts, you can actually read it despite not being the owner.

cat /var/intel/ops/access_codes.dat

Result: REDACTED

TL;DR: Permissions aren't just User/Group/Other. Always check your own group membership with id to see if you have a "backdoor" into a restricted directory.