How to Hack a Drink Machine\

"How do I install Arch Linux?" That question was bound to come up eventually. And with me using Arch, it's no coincidence that all of you want to use it as well. Arch is arguably the best Linux distro available. Distros that come close are Gentoo and some aspects of Ubuntu, bu ...more

You may have asked yourself, "How do hackers take my password, if the website owner can't?" The answer is simple. When a website stores your login password for the site, it is run through a cryptographic hash function before it enters the database (if the website isn't Sony). ...more

It's been a great year for video games, kind of. Sure, the AAA release lineup has been a trainwreck and hacking has been a bigger problem than ever. But two things have happened involving the federal government that have made video games more legitimate in the United States th ...more

Oh, LifeHacker, we love you. You've brought us so many handy HowTo's: Hack Wireless Internet, Bypass Blocked Websites, Convert a Laptop Into a Projector, Watch TV & Movies on the Web For Free, 10 Must-Know Google Privacy Settings, and more. And now, another great one: LifeHac ...more

Whenever we make a homemade circuit, we use what are called through-hole components. Any components with long metal leads is a through-hole component. They are great for soldering to, but it's tough to fit enough through-hole resistors and capacitors into a smartphone. To get ...more

Dreams are like an internal human holodeck. Inside your mind, anything is possible, from your grandest wishes to your worst nightmares. This is all well and good, but what if you could control your dreams and become the omniscient god of a handpicked reality whenever you go to ...more

If you've ever been inside of a real laboratory, you probably noticed how expensive the equipment is. You'd never be able to afford even just one of those ultra high-tech machines required to splice genes or split atoms. Even the lesser machines can be prohibitively costly, in ...more

This morning, I received a message from a friend who was reading a hack log, and she had some questions about the commands used. This got me thinking, as Linux has a ton of commands and some can be archaic, yet useful. We are going to go over everything you need to know to rea ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

We're officially seeking Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the community. Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (IF up to par, of course). There is no ne ...more

We're officially seeking Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the community. Contributors will write tutorials, which will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (IF up to par, of course). There is no ne ...more

In 2007, Nintendo introduced the world to motion control video games with the Wii. Microsoft and Sony built on Nintendo's phenomenal success and released their own motion control products for the XBox 360 and Playstation 3 late in 2010: the Kinect and the Move. The Move is bas ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

You'll see a lot of Linux action going down here at Null Byte. We use Linux for hacking-related stuff because it provides a more relaxed programming environment, making it easy to write exploits and tools. Linux has many features Windows is lacking, such as full control over t ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the most ...more

Big brother is watching when you're playing around on another system—and big brother is that system. Everything from operating systems to intrusion detection systems to database services are maintaining logs. Sometimes, these are error logs that can show attackers trying vario ...more

Injection is an attack vector that involves breaking out of a data context and switching into a programming context through the use of special characters. These characters are significant to the interpreter being used, but not needed for the general user input being asked for. ...more

In 1988, John Langley created COPS for the fledgling FOX network. 23 years later, the show is still running. It is the Energizer bunny of prime time television. Since John has followed more police officers and witnessed more crime than any human being on earth (absolutely no q ...more

The days of trundling hoops, hopscotch and painted wooden rocking horses are long since past. The latest trend in toys? Biofeedback. Electroencephalography. A decade into the 21st century, the toy market is awash in products that incorporate functional neural sensors. One suc ...more

The developer community has already made some incredibly quick progress on implementing assemblers, interpreters, and emulators for the proposed virtual computer in 0x10c, Notch's latest game. But the truth is that the majority of programmers out there couldn't be bothered wit ...more

No doubt you've seen some of the hack logs being released. One part that stands out over and over again is the heavy database usage. It used to be early on that virus and hackers would destroy data, usually just for lulz. However, with the explosive commercial growth of the In ...more

In general, hacking and information security is not just one discipline, but a number of them, and today we will look into some of the networking concepts. In the last Hacker Fundamentals, we talked about the OSI model as well as a little on TCP/IP and the protocols that make ...more

Wireless networks. Nowadays, everyone uses 'em, but most don't secure 'em. On average, I can drive up and down any block in my city and find at least one or two open or semi-open networks on any given day. With some changed MAC addresses for good measure, an attacker can use y ...more

Introduction The 3 major anonymity networks on the Internet are Tor/Onionland, I2P and Freenet. If you feel confused on which one is the "best" one to use the answer is simple. Use all three! Each anonymity network is designed for a different specific purpose. One network al ...more

If you're a frequenter of Null Byte, I bet you have at least some interest in information security. Furthermore, you have a hobby that if applied in certain ways, will get you arrested. I've received quite a few messages from the community here about federal cybercrime law and ...more

Imagine you're in Paris and you need to get to Versailles. Looking around for directions, you come to a cold realization—you do not speak a lick of French! How are you going to get to Versailles and what happens if there is a detour? It will be a difficult struggle, and you'd ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

Anonymity is something that doesn't exist today. Everything you do in the world is tracked, from the purchases you make to surfing the internet—even taking pictures on your iPhone. Everything you have ever said and done on the internet is still there—somewhere. This is called ...more

When it comes to hacking guides, most are written from the perspective of a Linux user. There are a few outliers, but it's mainly Linux, which leads to the idea that Linux is the only OS that's viable for hacking. This couldn't be further from the truth. A properly set up Appl ...more

Welcome back, my amateur hackers! Many of you here are new to hacking. If so, I strongly recommend that each of you set up a "laboratory" to practice your hacks. Just like any discipline, you need to practice, practice, and practice some more before you take it out to the rea ...more

From Instagram bot farms in China all the way to vending machines in Moscow that promise to sell you fake followers — the Facebook-owned empire is attracting the attention of the world around. When it comes to Russia especially, the country seems to be developing a little crus ...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

Your social security number, credit card information, and medical history can fall into the wrong hands if you're not careful about how and where you share your data online. If you really care about your data, there are tools and techniques you can utilize to protect yourself ...more

So, you want to throw a steampunk party and you have almost everything in place—your steampunk persona and iPhone are ready to go, and you've even got your own steampunk straight razor. What's missing? The Elixirator, that's what. The Elixirator is a steampunk cocktail-making ...more

Life hack your next outdoor picnic to cool your warmed drinks, keep flies away, and transport food efficiently from your home to your local park. Mason jars are great for carrying salads, pastas, and other non-finger food meals. Muffin tins can transport a variety of serving- ...more

When alcohol tastes bad, there's little you can do to save it—or so you think. While it might seem easier to toss your entire bottle of old, opened wine, or to give up and drink crappy vodka anyway, there are creative ways to turn a spoiled or just plain bad boozy beverage int ...more

There's no doubt Kali has established itself as the most popular penetration distribution available. However, just because it's the fan favorite of beginners and security researchers doesn't make it right for everyone. Manjaro Linux is a beginner-friendly Arch-based distributi ...more

The world is full of vulnerable computers. As you learn how to interact with them, it will be both tempting and necessary to test out these newfound skills on a real target. To help you get to that goal, we have a deliberately vulnerable Raspberry Pi image designed for practic ...more

Three smart devices shown at CES 2016 are making it easier for you to make stupid decisions. PicoBrew, Somabar, and 10-Vins demonstrated their systems for beer, mixed cocktails, and wine, respectively, and each one is attempting to change the way we enjoy our favorite potent p ...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 neophyte hackers! I have already done a few tutorials on password cracking, including ones for Linux and Windows, WEP and WPA2, and even online passwords using THC Hydra. Now, I thought it might be worthwhile to begin a series on password cracking in general. ...more

If you ever need to spice up a party, drinking games can really get things started quickly. The objectives are generally to complete tasks or challenges, but it's really all a thinly-veiled excuse for increasing everyone's alcohol intake in a hurry while testing levels of ineb ...more

If you thought humans were reading your résumé, think again. Robots do, and their one solitary objective is to systematically crush the hopes and dreams of those who don't make the cut. Instead of paying a few humans to read thousands of résumés over a couple weeks, many compa ...more

As Android bug bounty hunters and penetration testers, we need a properly configured environment to work in when testing exploits and looking for vulnerabilities. This could mean a virtual Android operating system or a dedicated network for capturing requests and performing ma ...more

This is the very first article in my series on setting up a Mac for hacking. In this series, I will be operating under the assumption that you have a clean install of macOS (previously OS X). If you aren't starting with a clean installation, there may be a few differences, but ...more

Parties are a great way to celebrate and have fun with your good friends, so to make sure your next party rocks, I've assembled some of the biggest life-hackers on YouTube to bring you 10 outrageous party tricks your guests will not forget. Video: . All these YouTubers posted ...more

Where you lead, Gilmore Girls, I will follow. My lifelong dream to grow up Gilmore was to blame for how I ended up waiting in line outside a Williamsburg coffee shop at 6:30 a.m. on a random Wednesday morning. If I was going to start my day like a Lorelai, I needed to live my ...more

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Every so often, a MAJOR vulnerability appears that makes millions of systems vulnerable to attack. The most recent, named Shellshock, basically leaves every Mac OS X, Linux, and UNIX system on the planet vulnerable. As nearly two-thirds of ...more

Metasploit is an extremely popular pentesting tool capable of enumeration, exploitation, and injecting shell code, and is a part of almost every hacking toolkit. So there's no way I could leave this out of our series on getting your Mac set up for hacking. Luckily for those o ...more

Networking is built largely on trust. Most devices do not verify that another device is what it identifies itself to be, so long as it functions as expected. In the case of a man-in-the-middle attack, we can abuse this trust by impersonating a wireless access point, allowing u ...more

We're almost there to completing the setup of your Mac for hacking! Now that we have Git and Homebrew under our belts, it's time to take on something fairly easy, but very important for our hacking needs. Ruby is an object-oriented scripting language used to write powerful pr ...more

Maybe you've had a long day... or maybe you just want to treat yo' self. So you head to your local watering hole for some tasty, tasty liquor. Your current fave on the cocktail list is a drink of something strong with bitters; you don't know what bitters are, but damn if that ...more

As an avid coffee drinker, I used to be a big fan of single-serve coffee machines. One day, the machine decided to stop working—which does happen from time to time—so I decided to go old school and use my automatic drip. Then, I realized that all I had were pods of single-serv ...more

Welcome back, my budding hackers! One of the keys to becoming a professional and successful hacker is to think creatively. There is always a way to get into any network or system, if you think creatively. In previous tutorials, I have demonstrated ways to crack passwords on b ...more

Despite Tinder's tremendous popularity, Bumble has carved out a billion-dollar business by focusing on women (they message first), simplicity (ice breakers less wordy than OkCupid), and relationships past romance (friends and prospective jobs). Now they're diving into customiz ...more

If you're new to MyFitnessPal, it might seem daunting. The app is way more than just a calorie counter, but that's because getting fit is just as much about changing your lifestyle as it is about watching what you eat. So don't let it overwhelm you — there are just a handful o ...more