Crack Passwords with Cain

After gaining access to a root account, the next order of business is using that power to do something more significant. If the user passwords on the system can be obtained and cracked, an attacker can use them to pivot to other machines if the login is the same across systems ...more

Leaked databases get passed around the internet and no one seems to notice. We've become desensitized to the data breaches that occur on a daily basis because it happens so frequently. Join me as I illustrate why reusing passwords across multiple websites is a truly awful prac ...more

Null Byte users have often requested video content, but the question has always been what format would best serve our community. This week, we partnered with Null Space Labs, a hackerspace in Los Angeles, to test the waters by hosting a series of talks on ethical hacking for s ...more

WPA Enterprise is widely used in large corporations as it offers individual and centralized control through a server that authenticate the users (RADIUS server). In this tutorial I will show you how to break the barrier and obtain the user credentials. How It Works? Let's ha ...more

There are many tools out there for Wi-Fi hacking, but few are as integrated and well-rounded as Bettercap. Thanks to an impressively simple interface that works even over SSH, it's easy to access many of the most powerful Wi-Fi attacks available from anywhere. To capture hands ...more

To name just a few companies, VK, µTorrent, and ClixSense all suffered significant data breaches at some point in the past. The leaked password databases from those and other online sites can be used to understand better how human-passwords are created and increase a hacker's ...more

Hi, my name is Alan, and I am not a script kiddy brat from Xbox Live asking you how to boot someone offline for being mean to me. I am an amateur white hat hacker hoping to learn and teach and this is my first tutorial. THC Hydra is very prominent online brute-force tool and ...more

After exploiting a vulnerable target, scooping up a victim's credentials is a high priority for hackers, since most people reuse passwords. Those credentials can get hackers deeper into a network or other accounts, but digging through the system by hand to find them is difficu ...more

Passwords are everywhere. We use them to unlock phones, computers, websites, encrypted disks, encrypted files... the list just goes on and on. Savvy users will already have a password manager of some sort that can generate a very strong password on a per site basis. However, t ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! As we saw in my first tutorial on Facebook hacking, it is not a simple task. However, with the right skills and tools, as well as persistence and ingenuity, nothing is beyond our capabilities. One of the cardinal rules of hacking is: "If I ca ...more

If you're interested in joining the increasingly popular and lucrative world of ethical or "white hat" hacking, you're far from alone. More and more coding and programming pros are turning to this field thanks to the high pay, countless opportunities, and exciting work environ ...more

Using Hydra, Ncrack, and other brute-forcing tools to crack passwords for the first time can be frustrating and confusing. To ease into the process, let's discuss automating and optimizing brute-force attacks for potentially vulnerable services such as SMTP, SSH, IMAP, and FTP ...more

Passwords stored in web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are a gold mine for hackers. An attacker with backdoor access to a compromised computer can easily dump and decrypt data stored in web browsers. So, you'll want to think twice before hitting "Save" next ti ...more

Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! So many readers in the Null Byte community have been asking me questions about evading detection and hacking undetected that I decided to start a new series on digital forensics. I applaud each of you for your concern, as the last thing I ...more

Welcome back, my budding hackers. So many of you are interested in hacking Wi-Fi that I have decided to revisit my Wi-Fi Hacking series with some updated and more in-depth material. I strongly suggest that you look at some of my earlier posts, such as "Getting Started with Te ...more

Each day, we read about another security breach somewhere in our digital world. It has become so commonplace that we hardly react anymore. Target, J.P. Morgan, iCloud, Home Depot, and the list goes on and on. Those are just the big ones that get reported in the news. Millions ...more

Malevolent hackers can divert your incoming calls and texts to any number they want, and they don't need to be a criminal mastermind to do it. Even friends and family members can reroute your incoming calls and messages so that they know exactly who's trying to reach you, and ...more

Welcome back, my rookie hackers! As hackers, we are often faced with the hurdle of cryptography and encryption. In some cases, we use it to hide our actions and messages. Many applications and protocols use encryption to maintain confidentiality and integrity of data. To be a ...more

It seems like every day now that we see a new headline on a cyber security breach. These headlines usually involve millions of records being stolen from some large financial institution or retailer. What doesn't reach the headlines are the many individual breaches that happen ...more

There are many password-cracking tools out there, but one of the mainstays has always been John the Ripper. It's a powerful piece of software that can be configured and used in many different ways. Metasploit actually contains a little-known module version of JTR that can be u ...more

No operating system is stricken with as many vulnerabilities as Windows, and it's often a race to release the latest patches to fix things. From an attacker's point of view, knowing which patches are present on a Windows machine can make or break successful exploitation. Today ...more

Hello, Null Byte! Mkilic here. I doubt anyone knows I even exist on Null Byte, so hopefully this post will allow me to become more involved in the community and also help me learn even more. This project is somewhat similar to OTW's article here, and pry0cc's here, in which b ...more

Developers creating login systems know better than to store passwords in plain text, usually storing hashes of a password to prevent storing the credentials in a way a hacker could steal. Due to the way hashes work, not all are created equal. Some are more vulnerable than othe ...more

Hashes containing login passwords are transmitted between Windows computers on local Wi-Fi networks. By intercepting and decrypting these hashes using Responder and John the Ripper, respectively, we can learn a target's login credentials which can be later used to gain physica ...more

Containers are isolated software instances representing applications, servers, and even operating systems—complete with all of their dependencies, libraries configuration files, etc.—and they're taking over the corporate world. The ephemeral, portable nature of containers help ...more

A rainbow table can be thought of like a dictionary, except instead of words and their definitions, it holds combinations of characters on one side and their hashed form on the other. What is a hash and why would you want to know what random combinations of characters are hash ...more

Apple includes a lot of helpful features for iCloud email addresses, but one of its best-kept secrets will give you total control over organizing your inbox like a pro. So, what's the big secret? Subaddressing, also known as plus addressing, tagged addressing, email address ...more

Microsoft's built-in antimalware solution does its best to prevent common attacks. Unfortunately for Windows 10 users, evading detection requires almost no effort at all. An attacker armed with this knowledge will easily bypass security software using any number of tools. As ...more

Hacking Wi-Fi is a lot easier than most people think, but the ways of doing so are clustered around a few common techniques most hackers use. With a few simple actions, the average user can go a long way toward defending against the five most common methods of Wi-Fi hacking, w ...more

Dirty, malformed, and outright mischievous text strings have long been the enemy of interactive website developers. Strings contain any combination of letters, numbers, spaces, and punctuation, and are entered into text boxes on websites by users. These strings in particular c ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Now that we're familiar with the technologies, terminology, and the aircrack-ng suite, we can finally start hacking Wi-Fi. Our first task will be to creating an evil twin access point. Many new hackers are anxious to crack Wi-Fi passwords t ...more

Greetings fellow hackers. This tutorial is about creating "safe" passwords. This is different from strong passwords. Safe passwords is just creating a password that is not used by someone else or colleague, my definition. But how do you prevent something like this from happeni ...more

Using a keylogger to intercept keys pressed on an infected computer can circumvent encryption used by email and secure chat clients. The collected data can often reveal usernames, passwords, and potentially compromising and private information which hackers abuse for financial ...more

Welcome back, my nascent hackers! In previous tutorials for my Wi-Fi Hacking series, I have shown you how to crack WEP and WPA2 passwords, break a WPS PIN, and create Evil Twin and Rogue access points. In this continuation of the series, let's look at slightly different appro ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In previous Wi-Fi hacking tutorials, I have shown you ways to create an Evil Twin, to DoS a wireless AP, and to crack WEP and WPA2 passwords, but in this tutorial, I will show you something a little bit different. In many restaurants, hote ...more

When learning Wi-Fi hacking, picking a compatible Wi-Fi network adapter is the first step to learning to crack Wi-Fi passwords. Many compatible adapters have swappable antennas, and there are several different kinds of specialized antennas you can add to a network adapter to ...more

Wi-Fi tools keep getting more and more accessible to beginners, and the LAZY script is a framework of serious penetration tools that can be explored easily from within it. This powerful and simple tool can be used for everything from installing new add-ons to grabbing a WPA ha ...more

What's your Twitter handle worth? If it's considered "desirable" (aka short and simple), it'll get you around 100 bucks, or, if you prefer, the affections of a teenage girl. A user with the handle @blanket found out the hard way that Twitter's security is atrocious when his a ...more

People are always looking for ways to save money, and for the most part, saving money and cheating the system are synonymous when it comes to things like free internet access. Practically every new gadget is capable of connecting to the web, which means more and more people ar ...more

There are countless tutorials online that show how to use Netstat and Tasklist to find an intruder on your computer. But with a few PowerShell functions, it's possible for a hacker to evade detection from the almighty command line. Before we dive into the technical sections, ...more

In the second part of this tutorial, we are going to crack the hashes that we've captured previously. I'm going to explain how to do it with the powerful John the Ripper. It comes with Kali by default, so no need to install! Using John the Ripper If you don't know nothing ab ...more

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! There's an evil dictator hellbent on destroying the world, and in one of our last hacks, we successfully compromised his computer and saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Then, we covered our tracks so no one would know what we did, a ...more

With Virtual Network Computing, you don't need to carry a spare keyboard, mouse, or monitor to use your headless computer's full graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, you can connect remotely to it through any available computer or smartphone. Virtual Network Computing, be ...more

Design flaws in many routers can allow hackers to steal Wi-Fi credentials, even if WPA or WPA2 encryption is used with a strong password. While this tactic used to take up to 8 hours, the newer WPS Pixie-Dust attack can crack networks in seconds. To do this, a modern wireless ...more

While Wi-Fi networks can be set up by smart IT people, that doesn't mean the users of the system are similarly tech-savvy. We'll demonstrate how an evil twin attack can steal Wi-Fi passwords by kicking a user off their trusted network while creating a nearly identical fake one ...more

After finding and monitoring nearby wireless access points and devices connected to them, hackers can use this information to bypass some types of security, like the kind used for Wi-Fi hotspots in coffee shops, hotels, and in flights high above the ground. By swapping their M ...more

Hello, multicolored-hat hackers! Today I am going to show you how to use the wordlists that come preinstalled with Kali Linux to crack those annoying hashes that contain our passwords. I'm sure that at some point in all of your lives, you have attempted to crack a password by ...more

Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! We have looked at a number of ways that we sniff traffic on the network with such tools as Wireshark, tcpdump, dnsiff, and others, but each of these tools is only capable of pulling packets off the wire. Those packets can be examined for ...more

Web applications are becoming more and more popular, replacing traditional desktop programs at an accelerated rate. With all these new apps out on the web comes various security implications associated with being connected to the internet where anyone can poke and prod at them ...more

No matter how many PSAs are published on the topic, studies continue to show that we are generally terrible at creating secure passwords and PINs. Using the same password (or variations of it) for multiple sites is another huge no-no that the majority of people ignore, and eve ...more

Hacker's are always looking for new ways to exploit systems and exfiltrate passwords, even in hashed form. Sophisticated brute-force attacks powered by high-end GPUs can perform millions of password attempts per second. But Ubuntu and Debian users aren't completely helpless. T ...more

Passwords on Windows are stored as hashes, and sometimes they can be tough to crack. In certain situations, though, we can get around that by using the hash as is, with no need to know the plaintext password. It's especially interesting if we can manage to get the hash of an a ...more

Hackers often find fascinating files in the most ordinary of places, one of those being FTP servers. Sometimes, luck will prevail, and anonymous logins will be enabled, meaning anyone can just log in. But more often than not, a valid username and password will be required. But ...more

The easiest way around a security policy is to find users who don't follow it. The Have I Been Pwned database identifies accounts with information breached by major third parties like Yahoo and LinkedIn. With Maltego, hackers can locate breached accounts created using company ...more

Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all provide built-in features that allow you to save your username and password for your favorite sites, making the process for entering your credentials a breeze when you revisit them. While this automation does make your life a little easier, it ...more

Passwords and data stored in web browsers are extremely valuable to hackers. If not for financial gain, black hat hackers may still leak your passwords and personal information for amusement. Never undervalue what you're worth to a hacker. While I'm definitely no black hat, d ...more

A powered-off MacBook can be compromised in less than three minutes. With just a few commands, it's possible for a hacker to extract a target's password hash and crack it without their knowledge. The goal in this article is to acquire a target's .plist file which contains the ...more

There are many ways to attack a Wi-Fi network. The type of encryption, manufacturer settings, and the number of clients connected all dictate how easy a target is to attack and what method would work best. Wifite2 is a powerful tool that automates Wi-Fi hacking, allowing you t ...more

Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Have you ever had a neighbor that you're certain is up to no good? Maybe you've seen him moving packages in and out at all hours of the night? Maybe you've seen people go into his home and never come out? He seems like a creep and sometimes ...more

You've probably noticed how we like to stress the importance of a strong password. After all, there are still people out there who continue to use passwords like 123456 and even just "password". But passwords aren't the only barriers that protect your information. According t ...more