bandit level 1

The goal for moving from level 1 to level 2 is to find a file named “-“ in the bandit1 directory and inspecting the contents for the password. Anyone familiar with linux is probably aware that a dash is often interpreted by many utilities as an indication to read from stdin, so how are we to get the contents? Honestly, I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. Just for grins I tried quoting the dash, but that had no effect. After another minute or two, came up with this:

bandit1@bandit:~$ ls
-
bandit1@bandit:~$ cat "-"
^C
bandit1@bandit:~$ man cat
bandit1@bandit:~$ cat ./-
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (actual password not shown)
bandit1@bandit:~$