Hello everybody, I really want to get into hacking and cybersecurity. I made this post seeking help from users who are into hacking and have some experience to tell me a pathway and how I should start my hacking journey, and give me some advice. I am always curious about new knowledge.

In overthewire level 16-17, I used nmap to list all the open ports and check which on was running a service by connect to it. When I connected to the only possible port, its gave an ouput and the the end it said "Read Block R" and was waiting for my input so I gave it the current password, but noting was returned and instead a KEYUPDATE message came through and I was allowed to give my input again. And each time I entered the password it returned the same KEYUPDATE message.

Then when I entered something deliberately wrong, it said "Wrong!" and ended the connection.

But the main confusion began when I saw write up about this challenge and all of them were pasting the password and it returned a ssh key.

So, I went over to chatgpt and it also initially told me to perform the steps that I did, and I again did it so I could paste the actual outputs.

Then chatgpt told me to pipe the password using cat, like this:
cat /etc/bandit_pass/bandit16 | openssl s_client -quiet -connect localhost:31790

and it worked.

It also worked when I executed this: openssl s_client -quiet -connect localhost:31790, and paste the password.

But doesnt work when I remove the -quite flag.

I dont understand.

Can you guys help out? Also, is there an easy to read version of the nmap and nc commands, I find their man pages a bit too dense and their tldr pages feel inadequate,

I have a theory about how HirePro handles proctoring and wanted to know if anyone has looked into this before.

Does HirePro's screen-sharing feed capture screenshots only when JavaScript raises a flag (tab switch, focus loss, fullscreen exit, etc.), or does it capture screenshots continuously at around 1–2 FPS and analyze them for abnormalities?

Handling both webcam feeds and screen-recording feeds for 300+ students over a 1–2 hour assessment seems computationally expensive, so I'm curious how they scale this in practice.

I also inspected the HirePro browser extension and found that its code appears to primarily disable other extensions, re-enable them after the assessment, and report if any extensions are forcefully turned back on. I didn't find any webcam or screen-monitoring logic in the extension itself.

Has anyone analyzed HirePro's architecture or worked on a similar proctoring system? What is the most likely approach being used here?