Oh how we love open source software. If it wasn't for Open Office, we never would have been able to write that seven-page English paper while on our friend's Microsoft Office-lacking laptop during an impromptu road trip to Mexico. And Ubuntu, an open source secure operating sy ...more
WPA-secured wireless networks, or WiFI Protected Access, is a form of internet security that secures your wireless LAN from being accessed by unauthorized users. Safer than WEP, or wireless equivalent privacy, WPA still has weaknesses that are prone to cracking - IF, that is, ...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
Heads up! We've done a new, more thorough review of the best Android file-sharing apps. You can check that out here. Our old file-sharing app roundup can still be viewed below for posterity. Update: The 4 Best File-Sharing Apps for Android (2018) We've come to a point where ...more
The price of hacking Wi-Fi has fallen dramatically, and low-cost microcontrollers are increasingly being turned into cheap yet powerful hacking tools. One of the most popular is the ESP8266, an Arduino-programmable chip on which the Wi-Fi Deauther project is based. On this ine ...more
The Digispark is a low-cost USB development board that's programmable in Arduino and capable of posing as a keyboard, allowing it to deliver a number of payloads. For only a few dollars, we can use the Digispark to deliver a payload to a macOS computer that will track the Mac ...more
With tools such as Reaver becoming less viable options for pen-testers as ISPs replace vulnerable routers, there become fewer certainties about which tools will work against a particular target. If you don't have time to crack the WPA password or it's unusually strong, it can ...more
If you've grown bored of day-to-day hacking and need a new toy to experiment with, we've compiled a list of gadgets to help you take password cracking and wireless hacking to the next level. If you're not a white hat or pentester yourself but have one to shop for, whether for ...more
The Watch Dogs video game series came out in 2014, enamoring audiences with the idea of a seemingly magical smartphone that could change traffic signals, hack web cameras, and even remotely control forklifts. This may sound like science fiction, but The Sonic uses a customized ...more
Relentless in its fury, the iOS text messaging exploit that exploded onto the scene late last week seems to do more damage than initially reported. Used to reboot devices and crash the Messages app, the string of text can also be used to crash third-party apps such as Instagr ...more
The USB Rubber Ducky is a well-known hacking device in the cybersecurity industry, but it needs to be preprogrammed before it can be used. That means it's not easy to issue commands to a target computer since you can't interact with it from afar after plugging it in. And if yo ...more
If you're ever in a situation where you need to take a peek at the wireless spectrum, whether it's for Bluetooth or Wi-Fi devices, there's a fascinating Python 3-based tool called Sparrow-wifi you should check out. It's cross-platform, easy to use, and has an impressive GUI th ...more
While the security behind WEP networks was broken in 2005, modern tools have made cracking them incredibly simple. In densely populated areas, WEP networks can be found in surprising and important places to this day, and they can be cracked in a matter of minutes. We'll show y ...more
You need a good microphone on your computer in order to make audio recordings, voice chat, or use speech recognition. However, not every computer comes with a built-in mic, and not every built-in mic works great. You can purchase a cheap computer microphone on Amazon for as l ...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
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
Your home has walls for privacy, but Wi-Fi signals passing through them and can be detected up to a mile away with a directional Wi-Fi antenna and a direct line of sight. An amazing amount of information can be learned from this data, including when residents come and go, the ...more
While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials. No matter if you've ...more
With an ordinary birthday card, we can introduce a physical device which contains malicious files into someone's home and deceive them into inserting the device into a computer. In my last series, we used a Post-it note to trick a neighbor into visiting a website that we cont ...more
While iOS 11 is ready to take over your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, let's take a step back and check out all of the new features that iOS 10 brought to the public when it was released to everyone in Sept. 2016. Some of the updates from iOS 9 to iOS 10 were huge, as you'll s ...more
You may not know what HTTP is exactly, but you definitely know that every single website you visit starts with it. Without the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, there'd be no easy way to view all the text, media, and data that you're able to see online. However, all communication b ...more
The Deauther Watch by Travis Lin is the physical manifestation of the Wi-Fi Deauther project by Spacehuhn, and it's designed to let you operate the Deauther project right from your wrist without needing a computer. That's pretty cool if you want to do all the interesting thing ...more
If you've wanted to get into Wi-Fi hacking, you might have noticed that it can be pretty challenging to find a safe and legal target to hack. But you can easily create your own test network using a single ESP8266-based microcontroller like the D1 Mini. Our goal is to crack a ...more
With just two microcontrollers soldered together, you can inject keystrokes into a computer from a smartphone. After building and programming the device, you plug it into a desktop or laptop, access it over a smartphone, and inject keystrokes as you would with a USB Rubber Duc ...more
This is my first how-to for this site so feel free to let me know if I can somehow improve! Inspired by the great Jailbroken iDevice and Rooted Android PenTesting tutorials I decided to share how I use my Toshiba Chromebook 2 with Kali Sana. Chromebooks have a couple of bene ...more
Netflix is more popular now than ever, but it still has a ways to go before satisfying everyone. Whether it's a lack of availability, buggy or unattractive apps, or just not being able to find anything to watch, lots of people have their complaints. But there is a way to make ...more
Smartphones are great. They help you keep in touch with your loved ones and stay up to date on what's going on in the world. The problem is that like everything else that's useful, they cost money to use, and between calling, texting, and data plans, it can get really expensiv ...more
If you've ever wanted to track down the source of a Wi-Fi transmission, doing so can be relatively easy with the right equipment. Using a directional Wi-Fi antenna and Wireshark, we can create a display filter to target any device in range to plot the signal strength on a gra ...more
Airgeddon is a multi-Bash network auditor capable of Wi-Fi jamming. This capability lets you target and disconnect devices from a wireless network, all without joining it. It runs on Kali, and we'll cover installing, configuring, and using its jamming functionalities on a smal ...more
Once you connect all of your devices to your Wi-Fi router at home, you'll never need that long, complicated Wi-Fi password ever again, right? Unfortunately, life isn't that easy. If you need to reset the network settings on your phone or tablet, or have a friend or family mem ...more
It's no secret that we love the Chromecast. From watching movies to playing games to giving presentations, this little $35 dongle definitely packs a punch. But unless you have a strong, solid Wi-Fi connection in the 2.4 GHz range, this little device has been out of reach to yo ...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
For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to buy that special hacker in your life a perfect holiday gift. That's why we've taken out the guesswork and curated a list of the top 20 most popular items our readers are buying. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been ...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
Near Field Communication, or NFC for short, is a feature that allows our smartphones to wirelessly communicate with other devices over a short distance while using almost no power at all. Think of it like a slimmed-down version of Wi-Fi or Bluetooth that can send a small burst ...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
In most cases, when the free trial of software is over, that's it—you're left to either pay for it or find an alternative. But what happens if the trial wasn't long enough to sell you on the product? It'd be nice if there was a way to test it out again without having to whip o ...more
Welcome back, my hacker trainees! A score of my readers have been begging for tutorials on how to hack Wi-Fi, so with this article, I'm initiating a new series dedicated to Wi-Fi hacks. This will probably be around 6-9 articles, starting with the basics of the technologies. I ...more
With the Wigle WiFi app running on an Android phone, a hacker can discover and map any nearby network, including those created by printers and other insecure devices. The default tools to analyze the resulting data can fall short of what a hacker needs, but by importing wardri ...more
When it comes to sniffing Wi-Fi, Wireshark is cross-platform and capable of capturing vast amounts of data. Making sense of that data is another task entirely. That's where Jupyter Notebook comes in. It can help analyze Wi-Fi packets and determine which networks a particular p ...more
The Pi-hole project is a popular DNS-level ad blocker, but it can be much more than that. Its DNS-level filtering can also be used as a firewall of sorts to prevent malicious websites from resolving, as well as to keep privacy-killing trackers such as Google Analytics from eve ...more
Smartphones and laptops are constantly sending Wi-Fi radio signals, and many of these signals can be used to track us. In this guide, we'll program a cheap IoT device in Arduino to create hundreds of fake networks with common names; This will cause nearby devices to reveal the ...more
A man-in-the-middle attack places you between your target and the internet, pretending to be a Wi-Fi network while secretly inspecting every packet that flows through the connection. The WiFi-Pumpkin is a rogue AP framework to easily create these fake networks, all while forwa ...more
ESP8266-based microcontrollers can be used to create exciting and legal Wi-Fi hacking games to test your or your friends' Wi-Fi hacking skills. When you first start learning how to hack Wi-Fi, it can be tempting to use your powers on Wi-Fi networks you don't have permission t ...more
There are hidden Wi-Fi networks all around you — networks that will never show up in the list of available unlocked and password-protected hotspots that your phone or computer can see — but are they more secure than regular networks that broadcast their name to any nearby devi ...more
Google just bought a huge chunk of HTC for $1.1 billion. They're bringing in around 2,000 employees, mostly from the hardware division, and these folks will presumably work under hardware chief Rick Osterloh. There's a massive patent portfolio involved, too, so stop me if you' ...more
These days, if you're having friends over, they'll probably ask to log into your Wi-Fi network before asking for a drink. But if you've forgotten your password, it can be quite hard to find, since most devices obscure the characters with asterisks. But it honestly doesn't tak ...more
Apple released the latest version of its iPhone OS, iOS 14.6, today, Monday, May 24. This latest update (build number 18F72) introduces new features like unlocking your iPhone with Voice Control after a restart, Apple Card Family support for up to five people, and subscription ...more
Despite the security concerns that have plagued Facebook for years, most people are sticking around and new members keep on joining. This has led Facebook to break records numbers with over 1.94 billion monthly active users, as of March 2017 — and around 1.28 billion daily act ...more
If you're trying to hack someone's wifi, a useful bit of software you may want to try is called Wireshark. Wireshark is a wifi packet sniffer, which is an essential step in actually breaking into someone's wireless system. Of course, this is illegal, so make sure you're only d ...more
If you play 3D Pinball on your Windows operating system, then you might be happy to know this hack. This pinball game, officially called 3D Pinball for Windows: Space Cadet, was available on Microsoft Plus! 95, and everything up to Windows XP. It was dropped from Vista. By us ...more
Long time reader, first time 'How To' poster. This tutorial has been highly requested. Here are the steps to perform a Pixie Dust attack to crack a WiFi password that has WPS enabled. Please note, this attack is very specific in nature. I've had a lot of success running this ...more
Whether you live in foggy California or icy Massachusetts, you've more than likely struggled with a cloudy, vision-impairing window that makes even the shortest commute impossible. While you can get rid of fogged up windows pretty easily using your vehicle's defogger system, ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! New hackers often ask me the same question: "What is the easiest platform to hack?" My response is always the same—it is not a platform, but rather a particular piece of software that is easiest to hack, which is on nearly every client-side sy ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! My preference for Linux as a hacking platform is well documented, and I have even created a series of tutorials to train new hackers. Without being proficient in Linux, you can't really call yourself a hacker. Every once in while, though, ...more
There are tons of hacks for Windows computers, so it was only about time that a hack for Bloons TD came out for a Mac. If you're using a Windows, you can still hack with Cheat Engine, but with Mac, you're going to want to use iHaxGamez. This video tutorial teaches how to hack ...more
A video tutorial showing how to create an autorun series of hacks that can run from a USB drive using Windows batch files. Create an auto hack USB drive using batch files. Click through to watch this video on irongeek.com
Hey, hackers! Now that you've hacked/owned your first "box" in my last article, let's look a little closer at another great feature of Metasploit, the Meterpreter, and then let’s move on to hacking a Linux system and using the Meterpreter to control and own it. Why Meterprete ...more
Since its inception in 2007, the Pwn2Own computer hacking contest has been challenging the vulnerability of mobile phones and web-related software. In 2010, the fruit of two full days of hacking came down to the exploitation of the following web browsers: Safari 4 on Mac OS X, ...more
If your wireless card is lost or damaged, you will need to replace it. In this tutorial, learn how to replace a missing or broken wireless card in a Windows based laptop. Your wireless card is essential if you plan on using any sort of WiFi or shared Internet connection, so yo ...more