INTRODUCTION
Wargame with respect to cybersecurity refers to security challenges where generally challengers or participants tries to exploit a vulnerability in a system or application. OverTheWire.org is one such popular website that provide numerous wargames. But what OverTheWire.org lacks is the ability to keep track of the ‘score’, after all it’s a game! Enter WeChall.net. wechall.net creates a platform for maintaining the score and progress across various wargames sites. At the same time, they also maintain global rankings for participants. This post describes how you can configure OverTheWire.org with WeChall.net. After making the configurations, every level that you break on OverTheWire.org will be tracked on wechall.net. You can view a comprehensive statistic of everything you did on OverTheWire.org. The following configuration is for a Ubuntu machine. So, lets started.
STEPS TO CONFIGURE
Step 1: Register at https://www.wechall.net/register
Step 2: Go to Accounts à WarBoxes. Retrieve the ‘WarToken’. It should look something like this – EXXX2-9YYY3-8ZZZ5-DAAA8-BBBB5-7CCC1 STEP 3: Open a terminal on your Ubuntu machine and locate the ~/.bashrc file. Add the following lines:
export WECHALLUSER=”<Username>”
export WECHALLTOKEN=”<WarToken>”
You can use a VIM editor to make the changes. Perform vim .bashrc and press Enter. When the editor opens up, press i to enter into insert mode. Now you can go to the end and paste the two statements. Once done, press esc and type :wq. This will save and exit.
Step 3: To test the changes perform echo $WECHALLUSER. As a result, the terminal should give out the username. If it doesn’t then log out, log back in and try the command again.
Step 4: Next step is to modify the ~/.ssh_config file and add the following lines:
Host *.labs.overthewire.org
SendEnv WECHALLTOKEN
SendEnv WECHALLUSER
.ssh_config file is located in /etc/ssh. Check the screenshot for details
We will use vim command again to modify the file. This time we have to use sudo while using vim since the file will most probably be read-only. Hence, type in sudo vim ssh_config and hit enter. The editor opens up, press i to enter into insert mode. Go to the end and paste the three statements. Once done, press esc and type :wq to save and exit.
STEP TO REGISTER
Step 1: The above steps completes the configurations. But we still need to register and let WeChall.net know when we finish a level on OverTheWire.org. To do so invoke the wechall command from the logged in ssh session. Use the following command –
WECHALLUSER=”<username>” WECHALLTOKEN=”< WarToken>” wechall
Step 2: Come back to WeChall.net, navigate to Account page and hit update against OverTheWire.org. This will update the score.
CONCLUSION
These basic steps would help you summarize and keep track of your scores on the levels completed on OverTheWire.org. In case you have any questions on the steps, feel free to leave a comment with your email id and I would be happy to help. Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy.
