Linux Basics Part 3

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! One of those areas of Linux that Windows users invariably struggle with is the concept of "mounting" devices and drives. In the Windows world, drives and devices are automatically "mounted" without any user effort or knowledge. Well, maybe a ...more

Welcome back, my amateur hackers! When you are using and administering Linux, it is important to be conversant in the use of the log files. As you know, log files are the repository for much information about our system, including errors and security alerts. If we are trying ...more

Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! This is the third installment of my series on basic Linux skills that every hacker should know. Although some hacking tools are available for Windows and Mac, every real hacker uses Linux—for good reason. Make sure to check out Part 1 and ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Although this article may have been better placed first in this series, I doubt that anyone would have read it when just starting out studying Linux. Now, that you are well into your Linux studies and have some familiarity with how it operat ...more

Welcome, my neophyte hackers! The aspiring hacker needs to know a bit of Linux to be successful, and probably most importantly, Linux networking. To fill that knowledge gap, I'm offering this guide on Linux networking basics. I assume that you understand a small amount of net ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Many of you have installed Kali Linux as a virtual machine (VM) using VMware or VirtualBox, while others have installed Kali (or BackTrack) in a dual-boot system. The drawback to installing these hacking systems as a VM is that it then requi ...more

In my first tutorial on Linux basics, I discussed the importance of hackers using Linux and the structure of the directory system. We also looked briefly at the cd command. In this second Linux guide, I'll spend a bit more time with changing directories, listing directories, c ...more

Welcome back, my budding hackers! I began this series on Linux basics because several of you have expressed befuddlement at working with BackTrack on Linux. As a hacker, there is no substitute for Linux skills. Linux beginners are often faced with the issue of how to find fi ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In this series on Linux for aspiring hackers, I'm trying to provide you with the basic skills needed to be capable in Linux as a hacker. One area that's critical that we haven't covered yet is building and managing an Apache web server. Apac ...more

Welcome back, my budding hackers! In my continuing series on Linux basics for aspiring hackers, I now want to address Loadable kernel modules (LKMs), which are key to the Linux administrator because they provide us the capability to add functionality to the kernel without hav ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! As mentioned several times in previous Linux tutorials, nearly everything in Linux is a file, and very often they are text files. For instance, all of the configuration files in Linux are text files. To reconfigure an application in Linux, w ...more

Welcome back, my hacker wannabees! Since nearly all hacker tools and platforms are developed in the Linux/Unix operating systems, this series of tutorials are for those of you who want to be hackers, but are unfamiliar with Linux. We've looked at numerous basic commands in th ...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

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Those of you who use Windows in a LAN environment understand that Windows machines can share directories, files, printers, etc. using "shares." This protocol dates back to the 1980s when the then dominant computer firm, IBM, developed a way ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Domain Name System (DNS) is one of those things we seldom think about unless it doesn't work. Then, it can be very frustrating when we attempt to navigate to a website and we get that frustrating error message. DNS enables us to type in a d ...more

Welcome back, my budding hackers! In previous tutorials, we've looked at some of the basic commands and concepts for using Linux. Along the way, I realized that I've failed to provide you with some basic background material on the stdin, stdout, and stderror. In human langua ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! One of the areas that often gives Linux newcomers problems are the environment variables. Although Windows systems have environment variables, most users, and for that matter, most administrators, never manage their environment variables. To ...more

Welcome back, my hacker trainees! A number of you have written me regarding which operating system is best for hacking. I'll start by saying that nearly every professional and expert hacker uses Linux or Unix. Although some hacks can be done with Windows and Mac OS, nearly al ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! I've been writing these Linux tutorials in an attempt to fill the void in the education of some aspiring hackers into the Linux operating system. There is a lot to know, and in this tutorial, we'll look at Linux file permissions. Step 1: Ch ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! As you have probably discovered by now, the file system in Linux is structured differently from Windows. There are no physical drives—just a logical file system tree with root at the top (yes, I know, roots should be at the bottom, but this ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! This tutorial will be the fourtenth in the Linux for hackers series and will focus on the MySQL database. Although this is not strictly a Linux tutorial, MySQL is the database of choice on most Linux distributions. In addition, it is the mo ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! In my continuing effort to develop your Linux skills, I now offer you this eighth in my series for Linux Basics for the Aspiring Hacker. In this tutorial, we'll look at system processes and how to manage them. In Linux, a process is a program ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In previous tutorials, I have shown you how to scan the globe for vulnerable servers and write simple scripts in BASH and Perl to perform other reconnaissance tasks. In a very recent guide, I taught how to scan vulnerable servers for Heartbl ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In recent tutorials, I have made reference to the name and location of the Linux devices in the file system, such as sda (first SATA or SCSI drive). Specifically, I have mentioned the way that Linux designates hard drives when making an imag ...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

Since I first announced the new Null Byte recognition for excellence a few weeks ago, several of you have written me asking, "How can I study for this certification exam, and what material will be covered on the exam?" Now I have an answer for you. The White Hat Hacker Associa ...more

We're nearly done getting our Mac set up for hacking. If you haven't checked out previous tutorials, I'd recommend you do so first before diving right into this one. While macOS is a powerful POSIX-compliant operating system, some of our Linux tools do not work out of the box ...more

Welcome, everyone! While Linux distributions are almost always used for exploits, security, pentesting and other stuff covered in Null Byte, knowing the Windows Command Line (or Command Prompt) is a useful skill that can help you in various ways, such as using exploit program ...more

Hi guys. I'm here to go for level 7 now lets get it start but i apologize u all that i posted this very late but now lets rock: Level 7 this level says: This time Network Security sam has saved the unencrypted level7 password in an obscurely named file saved in this very di ...more

Whether you're white hat, black hat, or some shade in-between, navigating through a network is a core part of hacking. To do that, we need to be able to explore a network to discover the addresses of gateways, interfaces, and other attached devices. When ifconfig just isn't en ...more

Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, basic mission 7, which required us to learn some basic Unix commands. If you have any prior experience using Unix commands, this should be a breeze for you if you sit and think for a second. These missions are for every ...more

Password strength and encryption are important things when it comes to computers. A password is the entire security of your computer, and OS passwords are not hard to break. Most users believe that if you have a password on your computer via the OS, that you are safe. This is ...more

Many folks seem to treat their computers as a sort of mysterious alien technology that only the shamans of the IT Department can comprehend. You might have gotten it into your head that you're just not good at computers and will never understand them. On the contrary, getting ...more

Welcome to the sixth Community Byte for coding in Python and beating the challenges presented to us by HackThisSite. These sessions are created to bring our community together, to learn from each other, and essentially grow together. Everyone is welcome, from novice programmer ...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

Creating any object you want is as simple as point and click if you have a 3D printer at home. If you don't have one handy, there are a few companies that offer printing services online. But to help services realize your design in extruded plastic, you have to make a 3D comput ...more

So you want to learn the basics of the fantastic language Java, but you don't want to search the Inter-webs looking for a great tutorial. Well you came to the right place, now may I present to you JAVA. Before We Begin You must have the latest version of Java Development Kit ...more

As you progress in the world of information security, you'll find yourself in situations where data protection is paramount. No doubt you will have files to hide and secrets to share, so I'm going to show you how to use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG for short) to encrypt ...more

Formerly ipchains, iptables is a script-based firewall that's included with both Mac and Linux operating systems. In my opinion, it's the best firewall in existence. The only downfall is that it's complicated for some people to use due to its script-based nature. But this shou ...more

Making your own circuit boards can be a daunting challenge. You have to design a schematic, test it on a breadboard, design the board layout, and then after all of that, you still have to print and etch a board! Luckily, we have Fritzing. Fritzing is a free open-source PCB d ...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

When you first become interested in learning how to program, it can be difficult to find a place to start. A lot of questions come up, especially if you're new to the idea of programming entirely. After you pick which language you want to learn, you have to worry about how you ...more

Bash (Shell) Scripting for Beginners Intro I am an occasional Linux user currently playing around in CrunchBang and loving it. Prior to this, I used to dual-boot Windows and xfce-buntu (or xubuntu) at work, and due to some unforeseen circumstances, my screen always went fuzz ...more

Wouldn't it be nice to just sit at your buddy's house, plug into his network, and see exactly what he's doing? What if it was as easy as that? What makes packet sniffers like Wireshark such potent tools is that a majority of local area networks (LANs) are based on the shared E ...more

How To Start To start developing website is a hard way to tell people depending on what they are best at. I'd like to describe a few of 'em. I will call them a few names depending on what effect comes out of 'em. And I will describe what developing languages there are out the ...more

Note: The article assumes that the reader has a fundamental understanding of at least one other programming language, and that this is intended serve as a quick reference for Perl's basic syntax & behavior in regards to Variables, Control Structures, & Functions. Learning to ...more

Many of my aspiring hackers have written to me asking the same thing. "What skills do I need to be a good hacker?" As the hacker is among the most skilled information technology disciplines, it requires a wide knowledge of IT technologies and techniques. To truly be a great h ...more

Managing hard drives in Linux is crucial to understanding your system and its operation as well as understanding the system you are exploiting or conducting a forensic analysis on. Linux has numerous commands that can provide us with information, control, and management of har ...more

The default tool for payload generation is MSFvenom, a Metasploit standalone payload generator as well as encoder. This tool is an incredibly powerful tool for payload generation, but it can be difficult and requires a bit of reading for newer users. Even after the initial re ...more

INTRODUCTION Hello dear null_byters here we go again with our third part of this serie. in this third part of our series I'd like to do a demonstration or continuation on fuzzing, but I think I should leave for later because the next tutorials about fuzzing will require from ...more

Hello, I'm a new guy around here and since I'm not seeing much tutorials in C i thought of contributing with something relatively simple. This will be a short series. This tutorial is for those who already know how to program in C and have a basic understanding how networks w ...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

Ruby is a dynamic, general-purpose programming language created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan around the mid-90's. It has many uses but with it's flexibility, it makes a great language to write exploits in. In fact, the entire Metasploit Framework is written in Ruby! T ...more

I saw many people asking for a Tutorial about writing their own Remote Administration Tool, so I now introduce you in a basic kind of RAT. This program is not for real use, but for learning how you could write this kind of tool. It will be basicly coded and not very refined. I ...more

Probably SSH is not as clean and fast as other useful tools like netcat, but it has some features which are very useful, and when you'll need them, here's how to behave with that huge amount of computers all over your house. Probably, you already know what SSH means, but for ...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

Correctly identifying the underlying technologies that run on a website gives pentesters a considerable advantage when preparing an attack. Whether you're testing out the defenses of a large corporation or playing the latest CTF, figuring out what technologies a site uses is a ...more