Moving from level 9 to 10 involves finding a string inside the data.txt file that begins with several “=” characters. Inspecting the data file reveals that there appears to be quite a bit of data mixed in with the text. Using the strings command, we can pick out the text. From there we can simply grep for any string that contains more at least 2 equal characters in a row.
bandit9@bandit:~$ strings data.txt | grep -E "={2}"
J========== the
========== password
========== is
W==========XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (actual password not shown)
bandit9@bandit:~$