Linux Basics Part 3

The USB Rubber Ducky comes with two software components, the payload script to be deployed and the firmware which controls how the Ducky behaves and what kind of device it pretends to be. This firmware can be reflashed to allow for custom Ducky behaviors, such as mounting USB ...more

Keystroke injection attacks are popular because they exploit the trust computers have in human interface devices (HIDs). One of the most popular and easily accessible keystroke injection tools is the USB Rubber Ducky from Hack5, which has a huge range of uses beyond simple HID ...more

In five short years, three generations of ultra-low-cost Raspberry Pi devices have challenged the boundaries of what a person can do with a $35 computer — especially with Kali Linux. With each Pi more powerful and cheaper than the last, the addition of the Pi Zero in 2015 too ...more

Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! In the world of information security, the most common intrusion detection system (IDS) you will ever encounter is Snort. As you probably already know, an IDS works similarly to antivirus (AV) software on your desktop; It attempts to identify ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! In this series, we have been exploring how a forensic investigator can find evidence of illegal or illicit activity. Among other things, we have examined the registry and prefetch files for artifacts and have done some rudimentary forensic ana ...more

Yes, I understand some people may consider this a repost. However, I have been searching for this answer for 3 weeks and after reading numerous reddit post, Kali Forums post and Null byte post I finally have gotten it to work for me. I would like to compile and share this info ...more

When performing something such as a mass mailer attack on a company, sending executables usually isn't the best option. That's why, in this tutorial, I'll be teaching you how to code a VBA script macro into a Word document in order to compromise a system. Combined with a littl ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! As expected with Null Byte's dramatic growth over the last year, we have added many new aspiring hackers who are still lacking in the basics of networking. In addition, with the new "White Hat" certifications coming out shortly, the exam wi ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! This new series on Bluetooth hacking was inspired by a recent episode of Mr. Robot (my favorite TV show). In episode 6, Eliot hacked the bluetooth keyboard of the police office in order to hack the prison and release his nemesis, Vera. This is ...more

In this tutorial I will be explaining the purpose of unique encryption/decryption scripts ( I will be referring to these at "UEDS" for this tutorial). Then, I will show you how to make one. Finally I will talk about the downsides to the method I use. I will also provide links ...more

Update My sincere apologies guys, but I just got a call from Rackspace to set up my "managed account". After a long discussion, there is no longer an "un-managed" option. This means that there is a minimum support fee of 50 dollars USD tacked on to every account. The instruct ...more

Welcome back, my novice hackers! In this third installment of my Hacking Web Apps series, we will look at the authentication of web applications. Remember, there are many ways to hack web applications (as I pointed out in my first article), and cracking authentication is just ...more

NOTICE: Ciuffy will be answering questions related to my articles on my behalf as I am very busy. Hope You Have Fun !!! Hello Guys, Welcome to my first tutorial and in this tutorial we are basically going to create a port scanner in python ( I guess without external librarie ...more

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! In an earlier tutorial, I introduced you to probably the most popular scripting language for hackers, Python. To become a professional hacker, you need to have some scripting skills and Python is a good choice if you want to master just one ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! I began this series on scripting awhile back to teach all aspiring hackers how to write some basic scripts for hacking and reconnaissance. Without developing some basic scripting skills, the aspiring hacker will be condemned to the realm of ...more

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! A short while ago, I introduced you to regular expressions. Regular expressions are a language that is particularly useful for finding complex text patterns in streams of data. Although first developed for Perl, regular expressions are use ...more

What if the code you are trying to reverse engineer is obfuscated or somehow corrupted? What if no way is left? Here comes what I like to call (wrongly and ironically) the "brute force of reverse engineering". Before I even start, as always, I wanted to apologize for any uncl ...more

Welcome back, my apprentice hackers! In this series on password cracking, I have been attempting to develop your skills in the age-old art of password cracking. Although it might seem like a simple and straightforward exercise, those of you who have attempted password crackin ...more

Welcome back, my aspiring hackers and those who want to catch my aspiring hackers! As most of you know, this series on digital forensics is inspired by the motivation to keep all of you all out of custody. The more you know about the techniques used by law enforcement and for ...more

For over 20 years, a tiny but mighty tool has been used by hackers for a wide range of activities. Although well known in hacking circles, Netcat is virtually unknown outside. It's so simple, powerful, and useful that many people within the IT community refer to it as the "Swi ...more

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! In the first part of my series on Wi-Fi hacking, we discussed the basic terms and technologies associated with Wi-Fi. Now that you have a firm grip on what Wi-Fi is exactly and how it works, we can start diving into more advance topics on h ...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

A stager is a small piece of software that's typically used by malware to hide what's happening in the early stages of infection and to download a larger payload later. We're going to explore how it works by creating a single line that downloads and runs potentially infinite ...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

For anyone wanting to keep information private, plain text is a format of the past. Instead, cheap, powerful encryption is widely available, but often not easy enough to use to attract widespread adoption. An exception to this rule is EncryptPad, an easy to use application tha ...more

The Raspberry Pi Zero W and Pi 3 Model B+ include integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and more than enough power to run Kali Linux. They sound like perfect all-in-one penetration testing devices, but the lack of support for monitor mode and packet injection usually meant b ...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

In order to increase the security and harden the integrity of an email account and its content, you'll want to use PGP on your Windows, macOS, or Linux computer. This is usually the first thing security analysts do to protect communications with encryption, and everyone else s ...more

Reconnaissance is the phase of an attack where a red team or hacker designs a strategy based on the information they can learn about the target, as well as what the available attack surface looks like. These scans can take time to discover relationships, but Raccoon OSINT scan ...more

It's easy to run Kali Linux from a live USB on nearly any available computer, but many publicly accessible laptops and desktops will be locked down to prevent such use. School, work, or library PCs can be secured with a BIOS password, which is often an easily recovered default ...more

Single sign-on (SSO) lets users login across different sites without having to manage multiple accounts. I'm sure most of us appreciate the convenience of seeing "Sign in with …" buttons that let us login with a single username. Hackers, however, see a possible avenue for expl ...more

Configuring onion services for the first time can be tricky. A surprising number of system administrators make seemingly trivial mistakes that ultimately lead to catastrophic cases of de-anonymizing supposedly anonymous sites on the dark web. OnionScan is a tool designed to id ...more

PowerShell Empire is an amazing framework that is widely used by penetration testers for exploiting Microsoft Windows hosts. In our previous guide, we discussed why and when it's important to use, as well as some general info on listeners, stagers, agents, and modules. Now, we ...more

In 2013, Offensive Security released Kali Linux, a rebuild of BackTrack Linux derived from Debian. Since then, Kali has gone on to become somewhat of a standard for penetration testing. It comes preconfigured with a collection of tools accessible by a menu system, tied togethe ...more

While the USB Rubber Ducky is well known by hackers as a tool for quick in-person keystroke injection attacks, one of the original uses for it was automation. In this guide, I'll be going the latter, explaining how we can use it to automate Wi-Fi handshake harvesting on the Ra ...more

With some of the groundwork out of the way in getting a Mac set up for hacking, it's time to start looking at toolboxes. Our first toolbox is Git, which will be used throughout future tutorials. Git is currently the most widely used version control system (VCS) in the world, ...more

The sheer variety of Android devices on the market is staggering—one report suggests there are well over 24,000 distinct phones and tablets floating around out there. When you consider that each manufacturer adds a few tweaks to the Android code base here and there, that makes ...more

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! In the previous two posts in this series, we looked at the basics of buffer overflows. In this post, we will look at one technique for finding buffer overflows. We will try to send random, oversized, and invalid data at a variable to see wh ...more

It's been a while when the major web browsers first introduced HTTP Strict Transport Security, which made it more difficult to carry Man In The Middle (MITM) attacks (except IE, as always, which will support HSTS since Windows 10, surprised?). SSLStrip and the HSTS Chronicles ...more

No more carrying around heavy laptops and thousands of Linux Live CDs and USBs to always be ready for pentesting on the fly! I hope you had a good Christmas and happy new year! Update1: Added the section "weaponizing your Android" where I talk about apps and fundamental Kali ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to se ...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

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Recently, I asked the Null Byte community what subject they would most like me to cover in future tutorials. Many of you cited scripting, and I decided it's best to cover this subject soon, so here goes. Any self-respecting hacker must be ...more

Whether you miss the good old days of Telnet or you want to know what hacking was like when security was nothing but an afterthought, Telehack is the game for you. The text-based hacking game is a simulation of a stylized combination of ARPANET and Usenet, circa 1985 to 1990, ...more

Router gateways are responsible for protecting every aspect of a network's configuration. With unfettered access to these privileged configurations, an attacker on a compromised Wi-Fi network can perform a wide variety of advanced attacks. Brute-Forcing Router Logins with Pat ...more

The $35 Raspberry Pi is an amazingly useful single-board computer (SBC) with a good balance of price, performance, and connectivity options. But for some projects, it just isn't enough. Whether you need more computing power, a smaller size, or better machine-learning capabilit ...more

When joining a new network, computers use the Address Resolution Protocol to discover the MAC address of other devices on the same network. A hacker can take advantage of ARP messages to silently discover the MAC and IP address of network devices or actively scan the network w ...more

Rooting. As an Android user, I'm sure you've heard the word once or twice. According to Kaspersky, 7.6% of all Android users root — but for the 92.4% who don't, we wanted to talk to you. Rooting allows you to remove barriers and open Android to a level of unprecedented contro ...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

For all those times when an app either isn't available or simply won't cut it, your phone's internet browser provides access to your favorite websites and services. But some browsers are flat-out better than others, and chances are, the browser that came pre-installed on your ...more

Being able to write your own hacking tools is what separates the script kiddies from the legendary hackers. While this can take many forms, one of the most coveted skills in hacking is the ability to dig through the binary files of a program and identify vulnerabilities at the ...more

Hackers can be notoriously difficult to buy gifts for, so we've curated a list of the top 20 most popular items Null Byte readers are buying during their ethical-hacking studies. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been dying to share this list with someone shopp ...more

On April 7, 2017, residents in Dallas, Texas, woke to the sound of emergency sirens blaring all over the city. No one could shut them off, and after repeated efforts to contain the situation, the city had to shut down the entire system. While the media reported a sophisticated ...more

Bash scripting is a convenient way to automate things on any Linux system, and we're going to use it here to automate certain tasks we use all the time. Bash is a simple language for stringing together several different Linux utilities. Its simplicity makes it easy for beginn ...more

If you want to control electronic devices, such as a relay or motor, you can do so using MicroPython with an ESP8266 and web browser. Usually, you'd program an ESP8266 using Arduino, but C++, which Arduino uses, is not always the easiest programming language for beginners to l ...more

Kali Linux has come a long way since its BackTrack days, and it's still widely considered the ultimate Linux distribution for penetration testing. The system has undergone quite the transformation since its old days and includes an updated look, improved performance, and some ...more

When you want a helpful task manager on your iPhone or iPad, any of the nine apps in this guide should be at the top of your list. But we'll review each app's features to help you determine which one might be best for your workflow. Using a task manager on your iPhone or iPad ...more