Hide n' Seek

find

grep is great for finding text inside of files, but what if you don't even know where the file is? That's what find is for.

[user@linux]$ find [where to look] -name "[file name]"

For example:

[user@linux]$ find /home -name "flag.txt"

This looks through /home and every directory inside of it for anything named flag.txt.

Wildcards

If you only remember part of the name, you can use * as a wildcard (basically "anything can go here"):

[user@linux]$ find / -name "*.txt"

That finds every single .txt file on the whole system, starting from root. It's going to be a LOT, so maybe pipe it into head, or send the errors to /dev/null like we learned in Redirect Me.

[user@linux]$ find / -name "*.txt" 2> /dev/null | head

A few other flags worth knowing

🚩 CTF hint: Flags usually hide in really stupid, weird places. find is going to be your best friend.

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Your turn

There's a secret.txt with the flag somewhere in ~/maze, hidden among a pile of fake secret.txt directories. Track down the real one.