Well after some initial frustration, I really enjoyed this box. It is the first Medium box I’ve tried, and happy to say I managed to get root mostly without help. After finding the user list with relative ease, I got stuck finding the creds for the initial foothold and had to look here for some pointers - as usual the answer turned out to be “look closer/harder”. I tend to get lazy/impatient when there is a lot of data to sift through and the answer doesn’t leap out at me immediately.
Once I got the initial creds I felt the rest was pretty intuitive. Thought I had cracked it once I found the A****.** file, but as soon as the usual decoding didnt work I knew the real challenge was still to come. I think figuring out the solution to that bit was the most fun for me, or at least the most satisfying! Stumbled a bit right at the end finding the admin pw but again the answer was right there if you remembered what to look for.