Hack Flash Application

When new Android versions come out, the modding community has to find new ways to root the OS. It's a fun cat and mouse game to follow, but it also means the process of rooting isn't exactly the same as it was the last time you did it. Android 10 changes how root works on a sy ...more

Fireworks are the best part about the Fourth of July and other celebrations, but they can easily cause accidental injuries. It's both safer and more fun to set them off remotely, so we'll hack some standard fireworks with nichrome wire, a relay, and an Arduino to ignite remote ...more

The Pixel 3a runs smoothly out of the box already, but installing a custom kernel can supercharge your experience even more. From fine-tuned CPU tweaks for boosting performance or battery life to adjusting the display colors for your screen how you want, ElementalX kernel can ...more

The Pixel 3a came out of nowhere and flexed its muscles to show the industry that you can have a great phone without a hefty price tag. Since Pixel smartphones are first-party devices straight from Google, you can be sure you'll have root access one way or another. For right n ...more

Automating port scanners, directory crawlers, and reconnaissance tools can be complicated for beginners just getting started with Kali Linux. Sparta solves this problem with an easy-to-use graphical interface designed to simplify a penetration tester's tasks. Sparta, authored ...more

Imagine being able to play a video instantly on hundreds of thousands of devices across the globe. It's totally possible, as long as all of those devices have a Chromecast plugged in. When Chromecasts are left exposed to the internet, hackers can use add them to a botnet that ...more

While hackers know and love the Raspberry Pi, many don't know of its cheaper cousin, the microcontroller. Unlike a Pi, which can be used more or less like a regular computer, microcontrollers like the Wi-Fi connected ESP8266 require some necessary programming skill to master. ...more

When it comes to rooting and modding any Android device, ADB and Fastboot commands will quickly become your two new best friends once you realize the power they have. From unlocking your bootloader to flashing any file you could ever want — if you're serious about the modding ...more

Information gathering is one of the most important steps in pentesting or hacking, and it can often be more rewarding to run things on the target itself as opposed to just running scripts against it remotely. With an SQL injection, a hacker can compromise a server and, ultimat ...more

With a simple social engineering trick, sudo passwords can be captured in seconds without the target's knowledge. The passwords can then be saved to a file or exfiltrated to another computer on the network. After exploiting a system, penetration tester's and hackers will ofte ...more

It's easy to forget just how cool face filters are. Augmented reality has come a long way, and apps like Instagram now offer a suite of impressive effects to play with, but some of the best ones aren't easily found. There is a treasure trove of exclusive, custom face filters t ...more

There once was a time in the Android rooting scene where we couldn't rely on using a custom recovery for all of our modding needs. Manual file flashing was very popular in the early days of Android before custom recoveries started taking over. With the rise of TWRP, it seemed ...more

When Facebook introduced Stories in 2017, many users despised the Snapchat-like feature on their main page. However, despite the outcry, Facebook doesn't plan to let you remove it. But you don't have to settle for this. With the help of some third-party apps, you no longer hav ...more

ARP spoofing is an attack against an Ethernet or Wi-Fi network to get between the router and the target user. In an ARP-spoofing attack, messages meant for the target are sent to the attacker instead, allowing the attacker to spy on, deny service to, or man-in-the-middle a tar ...more

You can mod every aspect of your phone's software with root, but if you want to make changes at the hardware level, you'll need a custom kernel. If you've looked into custom kernels before, one name undoubtedly kept coming up: ElementalX. It's easily the best custom kernel out ...more

Even though your iPhone's Camera app is fast and easy to use, its default settings prevent you from immediately accessing any other shooting mode aside from "Photo" with "Live Photo" on and no filter applied. But there is a way to make the Camera app remember what you prefer t ...more

Influencers of augmented reality demonstrate expertise in their fields and outline a strong vision for the future that they evangelize to others. They help define the direction of the industry and identify others who foster and create innovation in the field. The idea of the ...more

Your childhood "social networking" may have been to go outdoors to the neighbor's — and outdoors is a great place for kids to be. But these days, the terms educational, digital media, entertainment, and toddlers don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like most things in life, it ...more

One of the first steps in reconnaissance is determining the open ports on a system. Nmap is widely considered the undisputed king of port scanning, but certain situations call for different tools. Metasploit makes it easy to conduct port scanning from directly inside the frame ...more

As penetration testers, we sometimes need to securely store customer data for prolonged periods. Bruteforce-resistant, vault-like containers can be created with just a few commands to protect ourselves from physical attacks and unintended data disclosures. The subject of cryp ...more

It's always a good idea to know how an attack works at the very basic level. Manual techniques for exploitation often find holes that even the most sophisticated tool cannot. Sometimes, though, using one of these tools can make things so much easier, especially if one has a so ...more

Hackers and makers are often grouped under the same label. While hackers draw on computer science skills to write programs and find bugs, makers use electrical engineering to create hardware prototypes from microprocessor boards like the Arduino. We'll exercise both sets of sk ...more

Using Netcat to backdoor a macOS device has its short-comings. If the compromised Mac goes to sleep, the Netcat background process will occasionally fail to terminate correctly; This leaves Netcat running infinitely in the background and the attacker with no new way into the d ...more

Most users don't realize how much valuable data is in their network traffic. With a few simple tools, an attacker can quickly pick out cookies, passwords, and DNS queries from a macOS device as it covertly streams the victim's network traffic to the attacker's system. Here, we ...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

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

Database technology has vastly improved the way we handle vast amounts of data, and almost every modern application utilizes it in one way or another. But the widespread use of databases naturally invites a slew of vulnerabilities and attacks to occur. SQL injection has been a ...more

There's always an iPhone in our list of top phones for privacy and security, due in large part to advanced security measures like Face ID, consistent iOS updates, and easy ways to prevent unwanted access and excessive data sharing. However, some of those options actually do th ...more

There's always been a clear divide between flagship and midrange phones. Flagships will run you at least $700, while midrange typically falls between $250 and $550. The main difference is the processor, with midrange phones sporting a 600-series Snapdragon and flagships rockin ...more

Apple's next big developer event happened on June 4, and it was the first glimpse of iOS 12 that anyone's seen. While there were lots of rumored features to be unveiled at WWDC 2018, Apple concentrated mostly on squashing bugs and making iOS work as seamless as it did years ag ...more

While hackers have taken advantage of numerous vulnerabilities in Adobe's products to deliver payloads to Windows users via PDF files, a malicious PDF file can also wreak havoc on a Mac that's using the default Preview app. So think twice before double-clicking a PDF open on y ...more

Its official: On May 8, T-Mobile finally released the Android Oreo update for the LG V30 and V30+. Now, every major US wireless carrier has pushed the update. For me, this update is a big deal. Not only does Android Oreo bring some new tools and features, but LG has also inclu ...more

Smartphones are still "phones," which means communicating with others is usually a primary use. Ranging from a simple "hi" to a more personal conversation and even sharing passwords, our messages should remain private so that only the intended recipient sees their content. Whi ...more

Beginners learning brute-forcing attacks against WPA handshakes are often let down by the limitations of default wordlists like RockYou based on stolen passwords. The science of brute-forcing goes beyond using these default lists, allowing us to be more efficient by making cus ...more

If bezel-less was the goal of OEMs in 2017, 2018 seems to be the year of the notch. Thanks in no small part to Apple's iPhone X, more and more smartphone manufacturers are designing their displays with this polarizing cutout. While many are frustrated with the trend, it's wort ...more

Identifying vulnerable devices and services on a target router can be difficult without leaving logs and other traces of an active attacker on the network. However, there is a way to covertly decrypt and view Wi-Fi activity without ever connecting to the wireless network. Whe ...more

They're finally here — Samsung has officially revealed the Galaxy S9 and S9+, which run Android Oreo out of the box. Since we've spent plenty of time with the Oreo beta for the Galaxy S8, we already know about some of the best new software features coming to the Galaxy S9. Lik ...more

2017 was a down year for HTC. First, the U11 and U Ultra were widely criticized. Later, Google purchased a large chunk of HTC's manufacturing division, leaving the Taiwanese company running with a skeleton crew after losing 2,000 key employees. But that's not stopping HTC — th ...more

An incorrectly scaled object in your HoloLens app can make or break your project, so it's important to get scaling in Unity down, such as working with uniform and non-uniform factors, before moving onto to other aspects of your app. This HoloLens Dev 101 series has been desig ...more

To please those of us who love to mod and root our Androids, OnePlus has made both the OnePlus 5 and 5T relatively easy to customize — so much so that the 5T topped our list for the best phones for rooting. Unfortunately, unlocking the bootloader and using root to modify the f ...more

Shodan calls itself "the search engine for internet-connected devices." With so many devices connected to the internet featuring varying levels of security, the special capabilities of this search engine mean it can provide a list of devices to test and attack. In this tutoria ...more

Proxies can be quicker to use than a VPN for specific applications, like web browsers or torrent clients. Both services will hide your true IP address, but a VPN is slowed down because it encrypts all data through a VPN network, while a proxy just acts as a middleman for fetch ...more

Speakers today are a marvel for their portability and sound quality. No longer do we need giant boxes to bring down the house — a speaker that can fit in your hand can fill a room with your favorite music. This is even more important when you pair it with your smartphone, and ...more

Samsung has finally rolled out the Android Oreo update for the Galaxy S8 and S8+. If you're just now getting the update, you'll be happy to know that your Galaxy just got upgraded with plenty of cool new features. Like previous updates, Samsung has improved upon its software b ...more

Code execution in Microsoft Word is easier than ever, thanks to recent research done by Etienne Stalmans and Saif El-Sherei. Executing code in MS Word can be complicated, in some cases requiring the use of Macros or memory corruption. Fortunately, Microsoft has a built in a fe ...more

When hacking into a network during a penetration test, it can sometimes be useful to create your own wireless AP simply by plugging a Pi into an available Ethernet port. With this setup, you have your own backdoor wireless connection to the network in a matter of seconds. Crea ...more

So you saw the new iPhones with their bezel-less designs and fell in love. You imagined watching videos and enjoying HD content on its gorgeous OLED or Liquid Retina screen. At first, you worried about the lack of Touch ID, but Apple assured you that Face ID is an adequate alt ...more

The dark web is an intimidating place for a newbie hacker, but it's a powerful tool once you've learned to navigate it safely. To help you out with that, this guide will cover some need-to-know information for traversing the dark corners of the internet while keeping your iden ...more

Word games fit perfectly with the on-the-go nature of mobile gaming. They're easy to pick up whenever you feel like exercising your brain, but they're also fairly easy to put down when you need to get back to the real world. The main draw of word games is that they're great f ...more

If you need a tiny, flexible attack platform for raining down human-interface-device (HID) attacks on unattended computers, the USB Rubber Ducky is the most popular tool for the job. By loading the Ducky with custom firmware, you can design new attacks to be effective against ...more

Last June, Meta began shipping their Meta 2 mixed reality headset, to the delight of many. In September, it was announced that shipping had been delayed until the end of the year. Then it appeared that Christmas would bring something magical when Meta sent out an email four da ...more

Apple's screenshot editing tool first appeared for iPhone in iOS 11, and it's only gotten better with age. Instead of just a flash of light and maybe a noise, you're also greeted with a thumbnail preview of what you just captured — and that tiny image holds a lot of superpower ...more

Back in May 2017, Apple filed a patent application for a way to communicate with Siri by writing her questions and responses using iMessage. While that didn't make it into iOS, thankfully, something even better did — a way to ask Siri things with the keyboard directly in the S ...more

The reveal of Apple's new ARKit extensions for iPhones and iPads, while not much of a shock, did bring with it one big surprise. By finding a solution to surface detection without the use of additional external sensors, Apple just took a big step over many — though not all — s ...more

Those of us who are actively developing for the HoloLens, and for the other augmented and mixed reality devices and platforms that currently exist, are constantly looking for the next bit of news or press conference about the space. Our one hope is to find any information abou ...more

Apple's default browser for iOS, Safari, has a ton of useful features, and there's so many that it's impossible to know everything you can do to browse the web more efficiently. One you may not know about brings the Command + F keyboard shortcut right to your mobile browser so ...more

Most of us skip through documents like privacy policies and EULAs (end-user license agreements) because they're long and boring. But, as Congress just passed the SJR34 bill in early April, you're probably a little concerned about your personal data, so we summarized the privac ...more

It's official — the newest version of Google's mobile operating system is called Android 8.0 Oreo, and it's in the process of rolling out to many different devices. Oreo has plenty of changes in store, ranging from revamped looks to under-the-hood improvements, so there's tons ...more

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized computer that can crack Wi-Fi, clone key cards, break into laptops, and even clone an existing Wi-Fi network to trick users into connecting to the Pi instead. It can jam Wi-Fi for blocks, track cell phones, listen in on police scanners, ...more

Beginners luck is a phrase I have always hated. But really, beginners luck comes down to not letting your experience in something get in the way of the idea. This past weekend, I drove to Atlanta for my first ever hackathon, HoloHack, presented by ThyssenKrupp. Twenty hours a ...more