Welcome back, my newbie hackers! Hackers often are associated with clandestine and illegal activity, but that is not necessarily always the case. Hackers are increasingly being used and employed for law enforcement, national security, and other legitimate purposes. In this in ...more
In my first few articles, we focused on operating system hacks. These hacks have been primarily on older operating systems such as Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows Server 2003. Although these operating systems were first released, in some cases, almost 10 years ago, the ...more
Despite their awkward appearance, Apple's AirPods have become the earbuds of choice for working out, largely thanks to quality audio without any wires to tangle. However, at $159 to start, they aren't exactly for everyone. As with most innovations, when one company makes big ...more
Screenshots taken from a compromised computer can provide hackers with access to private emails, photographs, and information found in sensitive documents. This data can be used by the attackers to build profiles of a target for social engineering attacks and blackmail or even ...more
Samsung hopes to make a splash with the new Galaxy Note 9 to make up for the underwhelming sales of its signature Galaxy S9 series. This flagship is a radical departure from its predecessors — it's now optimized for gaming and paired with the most advanced S Pen stylus to date ...more
Local port forwarding is good when you want to use SSH to pivot into a non-routable network. But if you want to access services on a network when you can't configure port-forwarding on a router and don't have VPN access to the network, remote port forwarding is the way to go. ...more
Surveillance is always a useful tool in a hacker's arsenal, whether deployed offensively or defensively. Watching targets yourself isn't always practical, and traditional surveillance camera systems can be costly, lacking in capabilities, or both. Today, we will use motionEyeO ...more
Hello NullByte, it's mkilic! This time I'm here with the C.H.I.P from NTC. Although it is not too popular, the C.H.I.P is a brand new micro computer. It is very similar to the Raspberry Pi or Beaglebone Black. The key difference with this particular board is its cost and size. ...more
Welcome aboard my inquisitive comrades. I am starting a new series that nobody expected coming. It may not seem very exciting at first, but await the last few parts as many startling discoveries will be made. This is a series which I plan to continue after the completion of N ...more
In my last tutorial, I talked about creating a virus inside of a Word Document in the scenario of a mass-mailer attack. In this post, however, I'm going to be covering creating a fake image or screenshot with a meterpreter backdoor hidden inside to be used in a similar scenari ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! Most often, the professional hacker is seeking protected information from the target system or network. This might be credit card numbers, personally identifiable information, or intellectual property (formulas, plans, blueprints, designs, etc ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! This next subject might seem a bit obscure, but I promise you, this lesson will benefit you significantly either as a hacker or system admin. This tutorial will cover what is usually referred to as a regular expression, or regex for short. Ma ...more
It's new phone season — new handsets are releasing every few weeks, we're seeing endless software updates, and the holidays are right around the corner. We asked our tech-obsessed writers and editors to give us the lowdown on their must-have accessories when they splurge on a ...more
Popping a shell is often the main goal of a hacker, and it can be exciting when executed properly, but sometimes they do have their limitations. Metasploit's Meterpreter probably needs no introduction, but this powerful, dynamic payload can offer a leg up over normal shells. T ...more
In the realm of internet security, it's becoming clear that augmented reality is not immune to the increasing wave data breaches plaguing users. On Friday, furniture retailer Houzz, an early adopter of ARKit, revealed details of a data breach that occurred in December 2018. ...more
When it comes to attacking devices on a network, you can't hit what you can't see. Nmap gives you the ability to explore any devices connected to a network, finding information like the operating system a device is running and which applications are listening on open ports. Th ...more
Around the end of each year, Spotify offers a year-in-review service so its users can see what they listened to the past year and share their listening histories in fun infographics. Apple Music does not have such a feature, unfortunately, but there is a way to curb that FOMO ...more
Despite Huawei's ongoing battle with the US government, the Chinese company has continued to release phones in the US under its Honor brand. The Honor X series has been consistently released for several years, offering midrange specs at ridiculously low pricing, and the Honor ...more
With this year's iPhones, Apple built upon the success of the iPhone X in a somewhat iterative manner. All three phones borrow from the 2017 flagship's design, which many praised as being the best in years. They also tried to help those of us who don't have more than a grand t ...more
It's not uncommon for hackers to attempt to move laterally between devices in proximity of a compromised device to maintain a prolonged presence in the network. Malware utilizing USB flash sticks to self-replicate and compromise air-gapped machines isn't a new concept. In bot ...more
Electronic warfare tactics work by jamming, disrupting, or disabling the technology a target uses to perform a critical function, and IoT devices are especially vulnerable to attacks. Wireless security cameras like the Nest Cam are frequently used to secure critical locations, ...more
The conversation of which operating system is most secure, macOS vs. Windows, is an ongoing debate. Most will say macOS is more secure, but I'd like to weigh in by showing how to backdoor a MacBook in less than two minutes and maintain a persistent shell using tools already bu ...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
As of 2016, there are approximately 1.85 billion Android smartphones worldwide. This growing popularity has led to an increasing number hacks and cyber attacks against the OS. Unfortunately, Android users need more protection than what is offered by Google. The good thing is t ...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
Welcome back my, tenderfoot hackers! Many people come to Null Byte looking to hack Facebook without the requisite skills to do so. Facebook is far from unhackable, but to do so, you will need some skills, and skill development is what Null Byte is all about. Sometimes, if yo ...more
This Is for the Script Kiddies: This tutorial is about a script written for the How to Conduct a Simple Man-in-the-Middle Attack written by the one and only OTW. Hello script kiddies, Just running a script doesn't give you the understanding of what's going on under the hood. ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! The Holy Grail of any hacker is to develop a zero-day exploit—an exploit that has never been seen by antivirus (AV) and other software developers, as well as intrusion detection system (IDS) developers. In that way, you can exploit systems ...more
UPDATE: This post is outdated, the latest version with the correct links and updated instructions can be found at my blog, here - https://techkernel.org/2015/12/19/embed-metasploit-payload-in-apk-manually/ Hi guys, I'm here again with my second tutorial, as I promised. Metas ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! More and more, the world is turning to and adopting the smartphone platform as the digital device of choice. People are not only using smartphones for voice communication, but also web services, email, SMS, chatting, social networking, photogr ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Over the years, we have examined multiple ways to own, exploit, or compromise a system. On the other hand, we have not spent a lot of time on denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. For those of you who are new here, a denial of service is basica ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Many new hackers come from a Windows background, but seldom, if ever, use its built-in command-line tools. As a hacker, you will often be forced to control the target system using just Windows commands and no GUI. Although we would love to ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! There are many ways to hack databases, and most of these techniques require SQL injection (SQLi), which is a way of sending SQL commands back to the database from a web form or other input. In this tutorial, we will use SQL injection to get ...more
Mostly all hackers like to have a laugh. We like to have fun! We like to troll. And maybe, even cause some havoc once in a while. But, while we do this, we must always stay in the line of the law. In the United States (Where I live), the government will get involved in almost ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A number of you have written me telling me how much you enjoy the Mr. Robot series on USA Network. I am also a huge fan! If you haven't seen it yet, you should. It may be the best show on TV right now. Mr. Robot is about a young man with ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! In my ongoing attempts to familiarize aspiring hackers with Linux (nearly all hacking is done with Linux, and here's why every hacker should know and use it), I want to address a rather obscure, but powerful process. There is one super process ...more
Not too long ago I showcased ReCam, a free app that lets you schedule recordings and use your Android device as a security or spy camera of sorts. While useful, this app required you to schedule when to record in advance, resulting in you possibly missing the footage you inten ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A short while ago, I started a new series called "How to Spy on Anyone." The idea behind this series is that computer hacking is increasingly being used in espionage and cyber warfare, as well as by private detectives and law enforcement t ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! As you know by now, the Metasploit Framework is one of my favorite hacking tools. It is capable of embedding code into a remote system and controlling it, scanning systems for recon, and fuzzing systems to find buffer overflows. Plus, all o ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! Reconnaissance is one of the most important preparatory steps to hacking. As I have emphasized many times before here on Null Byte, you must know the operating system, the ports, the services, the applications, and sometimes even the language ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! It has become clear from some of your questions that quite a few of you are unfamiliar with the hexadecimal system, or simply, hex. The hexadecimal system is used throughout computing and if you have never studied this Base16 numering system, ...more
Welcome back, my budding hackers! Recently, I showed you how you could exploit the widely disseminated OpenSSL vulnerability that has to become known as "Heartbleed". Although the world has known about this vulnerability for over a month now, it will likely take many more mon ...more
Welcome back, my budding hackers! We've spent a lot of time learning to compromise Windows systems, and we've successfully compromised them with Metasploit, cracked their passwords, and hacked their Wi-Fi. However, very little time was spent developing ways to extract the inf ...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
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In my continuing effort to demonstrate to you how to hack the ubiquitous Windows 7, we will going after that notoriously vulnerable Adobe Flash that is on nearly every client Windows system (you are not likely to find it on servers). Flash ...more
Welcome back, my budding hackers! In my continuing effort to build your basic Linux skills for hacking, I want to show you how to build a secure "tunnel" to MySQL. Of course, the techniques I use here could be used for any application, but since MySQL is such a critical app ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! After the disaster that was Windows Vista and the limited and reluctant adoption of Windows 8 and 8.1, Windows 7 has become the de facto standard operating system on the desktop/client. Although the most valuable information to the hacker ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Awhile back, I demonstrated one of my favorite little tools, netcat, which enables us to create a connection between any two machines and transfer files or spawn a command shell for "owning" the system. Despite the beauty and elegance of th ...more
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! When Wi-Fi was first developed and popularized in the late '90s, security was not a major concern. Unlike wired connections, anyone could simply connect to a Wi-Fi access point (AP) and steal bandwidth, or worse—sniff the traffic. The first a ...more
Welcome back, my nascent Hackers! In my last blog, we looked at a passive way to gather information necessary for a hack. The advantage of using passive recon is that it's totally undetectable, meaning that the target never knows you're scouting them and you leave no tracks. ...more
Welcome back , my fledgling hackers! Lately, I've been focusing more on client-side hacks. While web servers, database servers, and file servers have garnered increased protection, the client-side remains extremely vulnerable, and there is much to teach. This time, we'll look ...more
When I left off on our last hack, we had hacked into the ubiquitous Windows Server 2003 server by adding ourselves as a user to that system so that we can return undetected at any time. The problem with this approach is that a sysadmin who is on their toes will note that a new ...more
Security researcher Nadim Kobeissi has discovered that the Windows 8 SmartScreen feature, meant to screen downloads for malicious software, actually reports the data about which applications users are installing to Microsoft. He also says that "the Microsoft server is configur ...more
Dropbox announced Tuesday that a recent security breach compromised a list that included the email addresses of certain Dropbox users. To avoid future complications, the service announced that it would be implementing two-factor authentication, and even more useful, a security ...more
A few days ago, Russian hacker Alexy Borodin found a way to get free in-app purchases on an iPhone or iPad. In-app purchases include things like items and power-ups for iOS games, as well as subscriptions and "premium" memberships for certain apps. The method is novel, not fo ...more
Android comprises an entire ecosystem of apps, games, functions, and features, so it would only make sense that it has its own lexicon. Words, phrases, and acronyms that didn't exist ten years ago are now used in an off-the-cuff style by developers and support technicians acro ...more
If you hate matching images, typing letters and numbers, solving math problems, and sliding puzzle pieces for CAPTCHA human verification, you'll love Apple's newest privacy feature for apps and websites. Generally, CAPTCHAs can be a massive nightmare on mobile devices. They a ...more
Wi-Fi networks come in two flavors: the more common 2.4 GHz used by most routers and IoT devices, and the 5 GHz one offered as an alternative by newer routers. While it can be frustrating to attack a device that moves out of reach to a 5 GHz Wi-Fi network, we can use an Alfa d ...more
A virtual private network is a necessary part of your arsenal if you're insistent on surfing the web privately and securely on your iPhone. The App Store is littered with hundreds of different VPN services that encrypt traffic and mask your IP address, but what they all have i ...more
A lot of time can be wasted performing trivial tasks over and over again, and it's especially true when it comes to hacking and penetration testing. Trying different shells to own a target, and testing out privilege escalation commands afterward, can eat up a lot of time. Fort ...more