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Hacking The Fender

The document describes a mission to hack the computer systems of "The Fender", a notorious hacker. The mission involves: 1. Reading a compromised passwords file to get usernames and save them to a new file. 2. Sending an encoded message to the boss to notify them of mission success. 3. Creating a new passwords file with the signature of another hacker, "Slash Null", embedded to frame them for the attack.

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lashanj2
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1K views

Hacking The Fender

The document describes a mission to hack the computer systems of "The Fender", a notorious hacker. The mission involves: 1. Reading a compromised passwords file to get usernames and save them to a new file. 2. Sending an encoded message to the boss to notify them of mission success. 3. Creating a new passwords file with the signature of another hacker, "Slash Null", embedded to frame them for the attack.

Uploaded by

lashanj2
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Hacking The Fender

The Fender,a notorious computer hacker and general villain of the people,
has compromised several top-secret passwords including your own. Your
mission, should you choose to accept it, is threefold. You must acquire
access to The Fender‘s systems, you must update his "passwords.txt" file to
scramble the secret data. The last thing you need to do is add the signature
of Slash Null, a different hacker whose nefarious deeds could be very
conveniently halted by The Fender if they viewed Slash Null as a threat.

Use your knowledge of working with Python files to retrieve, manipulate,


obscure, and create data in your quest for justice. Work with CSV files and
other text files in this exploration of the strength of Python file
programming.

If you get stuck during this project, check out the project walkthrough
video which can be found at the bottom of the page after the final step of
the project.
Tasks
0/20Complete
Mark the tasks as complete by checking them off
Reading In The Passwords

1.
Are you there? We’ve opened up a communications link to The Fender‘s
secret computer. We need you to write a program that will read in the
compromised usernames and passwords that are stored in a file
called "passwords.csv".

First import the CSV module, since we’ll be needing it to parse the data.
Hint
You can import the CSV module using the following syntax:

import csv
2.
We need to create a list of users whose passwords have been
compromised, create a new list and save it to the variable compromised_users.
Hint
Creating a new list for a variable called new_list with the following syntax:
new_list = []
3.
Next we’ll need you to open up the file itself. Store it in a file object
called password_file.
Hint
Use with...as syntax to open a file, remember it begins an indented block:

with open('filename.txt') as file_object:


# pass
4.
Pass the password_file object holder to our CSV reader for parsing. Save the
parsed csv.DictReader object as password_csv.
Hint
Use csv.DictReader to parse the file like so:

parsed_csv = csv.DictReader(file_object)
5.
Now we’ll want to iterate through each of the lines in the CSV.

Create a for loop and save each row of the CSV into the temporary
variable password_row.
6.
Inside your for loop, print out password_row['Username']. This is the username
of the person whose password was compromised.

Run your code, do you see a list of usernames?


7.
Remove the print statement. We want to add each username to the list
of compromised_users. Use the list’s .append()method to add the username
to compromised_users instead of printing them.
Hint
A list’s .append() method adds it to the list.

my_list.append(my_dict['Key'])
8.
Exit out of your with block for "passwords.csv". We have all the data we need
from that file.

Start a new with block, opening a file called compromised_users.txt. Open this
file in write-mode, saving the file object as compromised_user_file.
Hint
You can open a file in write-mode by passing "w" as an argument to open().

with open('new_file.txt', 'w') as new_file:


# write to file here
9.
Inside the new context-managed block opened by the withstatement start a
new for loop.

Iterate over each of your compromised_users.


10.
Write the username of
each compromised_user in compromised_users to compromised_user_file.
Hint
Use the file object’s .write() method:

write_me = "write me to file"


with open('file.txt', 'w') as file_obj:
file_obj.write(write_me)
11.
Exit out of that with block. You’re doing great so far! We’ve got the data we
need to employ as insurance against The Fender.
Notifying the Boss

12.
Your boss needs to know that you were successful in retrieving that
compromised data. We’ll need to send him an encoded message over the
internet. Let’s use JSON to do that.

First we’ll need to import the json module.


13.
Open a new JSON file in write-mode called boss_message.json. Save the file
object to the variable boss_message.
14.
Create a Python dictionary object within your with statement that relays a
boss message. Call this boss_message_dict.

Give it a "recipient" key with a value "The Boss".

Also give it a "message" key with the value "Mission Success".


Hint
Define a Python dictionary using the curly braces { and }:

new_dict = {
'key1': 'val1',
'key2': 'val2'
}
15.
Write out boss_message_dict to boss_message using json.dump().
Hint
json.dump() takes two arguments: a Python data object (like a dictionary or
an array) an a file object to write the resulting JSON to.

Pass the two parameters to json.dump() like so:

json.dump(dict_obj, file_obj)
Scrambling the Password

16.
Now that we’ve safely recovered the compromised users we’ll want to
remove the "passwords.csv" file completely.

Create a new with block and open "new_passwords.csv" in write-mode. Save


the file object to a variable called new_passwords_obj.
17.
Enemy of the people, Slash Null, is who we want The Fenderto think was
behind this attack. He has a signature, whenever he hacks someone he
adds this signature to one of the files he touches. Here is the signature:

_ _ ___ __ ____
/ )( \ / __) / \(_ _)
) \/ ( ( (_ \( O ) )(
\____/ \___/ \__/ (__)
_ _ __ ___ __ _ ____ ____
/ )( \ / _\ / __)( / )( __)( \
) __ (/ \( (__ ) ( ) _) ) D (
\_)(_/\_/\_/ \___)(__\_)(____)(____/
____ __ __ ____ _ _
___ / ___)( ) / _\ / ___)/ )( \
(___) \___ \/ (_/\/ \\___ \) __ (
(____/\____/\_/\_/(____/\_)(_/
__ _ _ _ __ __
( ( \/ )( \( ) ( )
/ /) \/ (/ (_/\/ (_/\
\_)__)\____/\____/\____/
Save that as a multiline string to the variable slash_null_sig.
Hint
Remember you can start a multiline string with three quotes:

multiline_str = """
___ __ __ __
/ __)/ \ / \ ( )
( (__( O )( O )/ (_/\
\___)\__/ \__/ \____/
"""
18.
Write slash_null_sig to new_passwords_obj. Now we have the file to
replace passwords.csv with!
19.
What an incredible success! We’ll take care of moving the new passwords
file over the old one in case you want to practice hacking The Fender in the
future.

Thank you for your service, programmer.


20.
If you are stuck on the project or would like to see an experienced
developer work through the project, watch the following project
walkthrough video!

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