Shodan calls itself "the search engine for internet-connected devices." With so many devices connected to the internet featuring varying levels of security, the special capabilities of this search engine mean it can provide a list of devices to test and attack. In this tutoria ...more
A man-in-the-middle attack, or MitM attack, is when a hacker gets on a network and forces all nearby devices to connect to their machine directly. This lets them spy on traffic and even modify certain things. Bettercap is one tool that can be used for these types of MitM attac ...more
Automating port scanners, directory crawlers, and reconnaissance tools can be complicated for beginners just getting started with Kali Linux. Sparta solves this problem with an easy-to-use graphical interface designed to simplify a penetration tester's tasks. Sparta, authored ...more
Gaining access to a system is always exciting, but where do you go from there? Root or bust. Sure, a compromised host is a great way to run a botnet, or do some other boring, nefarious thing—but as hackers, we want root. We also want to take the easiest path possible, search o ...more
Auditing websites and discovering vulnerabilities can be a challenge. With RapidScan and UserLAnd combined, anyone with an unrooted Android phone can start hacking websites with a few simple commands. RapidScan does an excellent job of automating the deployment of vulnerabili ...more
By using almost any packet-crafting tool, a hacker can perform denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. With the power to create just about any packet with any characteristics, a hacker can easily find one that will take down a host or network. Nmap and Hping are effective packet mani ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! The database is the hacker's "pot-of-gold," as it contains information that is very valuable to both the business and the hacker. In this, the second of my series on hacking databases, we're on the "hunt" for Microsoft's SQL Server. Althoug ...more
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Many newbie hackers seem to be confused regarding the process or methodology to employ a successful hack. Most want to simply go straight to the exploit without doing the due diligence to make certain that the hack will work and you won't ge ...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
Welcome back, my budding hackers! Metasploit, one of my favorite hacking/pentesting tools, has so many capabilities that even after my many tutorials on it, I have only scratched the surface of it capabilities. For instance, it can be used with Nexpose for vulnerability scann ...more
Smartphones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices send radio signals called probe frames to locate nearby wireless networks, which makes them easy to track by listening for their unique MAC address. To show how this kind of tracking works, we can program a NodeMCU in Arduino to snif ...more
With all of the bare-bones setup out of the way in our Mac for Hackers series, your Apple machine should be ready to run a significant amount of pentesting tools. We can pull tools from GitHub and compile them, we can pull dependencies or tools from Homebrew, we have both Pyth ...more
Before we dive into the world of frustration, I first would like to thank whoever of the admins and mods made the folder for Raspberry Pi in the How-To's, thank you. Now with that outta the way, this article is about Metasploit on Raspberry Pi (hence the title). I should say t ...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 novice hackers! I've written a couple of articles on reconnaissance and its importance, and as I've said before, a good hacker will spend 3 to 4 more times doing reconnaissance than actually exploiting the system. If your recon isn't good, you'll likely fail, ...more
The internet is constantly under siege by bots searching for vulnerabilities to attack and exploit. While conventional wisdom is to prevent these attacks, there are ways to deliberately lure hackers into a trap in order to spy on them, study their behavior, and capture samples ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! My recent tutorials have been focused upon ways to NOT get caught. Some people call this anti-forensics—the ability to not leave evidence that can be tracked to you or your hack by the system administrator or law enforcement. One the most com ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In the first part of this series, I introduced you to the basics of networking including IP addresses, ports, NAT, and DHCP. In this lesson, I want to introduce you to the basics of TCP/IP, i.e., Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Inte ...more
Hundreds of Windows 10, macOS, and Linux vulnerabilities are disclosed every single week, many of which elude mainstream attention. Most users aren't even aware that newly found exploits and vulnerabilities exist, nor that CVEs can be located by anyone in just a few clicks fro ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! Now that we have begun this trip down web app hacking lane, we need to first address target reconnaissance. Like any hack, reconnaissance is critical. (Are you tired of me saying that yet?) There is no better telltale sign of a script-kid ...more
The art of privilege escalation is a skill that any competent hacker should possess. It's an entire field unto itself, and while it's good to know how to perform the techniques involved manually, it's often more efficient to have a script automate the process. LinEnum is one s ...more
Many of our members here at Null Byte are aspiring hackers looking to gain skills and credentials to enter the most-valued profession of the 21st century. Hackers are being hired by IT security firms, antivirus developers, national military and espionage organizations, private ...more
Hello, Null Byte! Mkilic here. I doubt anyone knows I even exist on Null Byte, so hopefully this post will allow me to become more involved in the community and also help me learn even more. This project is somewhat similar to OTW's article here, and pry0cc's here, in which b ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Earlier in this series, I showed a you a couple of different ways of fingerprinting webservers. Probably the easiest way, is to use netcat and connect to port 80 and pull the webserver banner. The banner is simply the application advertisi ...more
Welcome back, hacker novitiates! In the next few hacks, we will be breaking into Windows servers. In this installment, we will learn to add ourselves as a user to a Windows 2003 server. Of course, when we have added ourselves as a user, we can come back any time and simply log ...more
A convincing domain name is critical to the success of any phishing attack. With a single Python script, it's possible to find hundreds of available phishing domains and even identify phishing websites deployed by other hackers for purposes such as stealing user credentials. ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Finding vulnerabilities in systems can be one of the most time-consuming tasks for a hacker. There will be times, though, when you'll find yourself in a position that you know that a particular port represents a vulnerable application or se ...more
Giving up your Wi-Fi password can be giving up more control than you think. Because of the way Chromecast and other IoT devices communicate, anyone on the same Wi-Fi network as your device can often make it do whatever they want. With a script called "Cast All the Things," we ...more
One of the first steps in reconnaissance is determining the open ports on a system. Nmap is widely considered the undisputed king of port scanning, but certain situations call for different tools. Metasploit makes it easy to conduct port scanning from directly inside the frame ...more
Encrypting payloads and encoding stagers are more effective against macOS than one might think. It's very easy to evade VirusTotal and macOS antivirus software using a few simple tricks. The goal of this project was to locate a known and easily detectable macOS payload, then ...more
NOTICE: Ciuffy will be answering questions related to my articles on my behalf as I am very busy. Hope You Have Fun !!! As much as I love other SSH bruteforcing tools like Ncrack, Metasploit, THC-Hydra, ... ( Just to mention a few ). I prefer using my own script. The tools ab ...more
Welcome back, my budding hackers! One of the most time-consuming, but necessary, activities in hacking is reconnaissance. Before we can hack a system, we need to know what operating system it's running, what ports are open, what services are running, and hopefully, what appli ...more
When setting up a Raspberry Pi, it's easy to overlook changing the default password. Like many IoT devices, the Raspberry Pi's default Raspbian operating system installs with a widely-known default password, leaving the device vulnerable to remote access. Using a tool called r ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! One of the first issues any hacker has to address is reconnaissance. Before we even begin to hack, we need to know quite a bit about the target systems. We should know their IP address, what ports are open, what services are running, and wh ...more
The public leaks of NSA tools and information have led to the release of previously secret zero-day exploits such as EternalBlue, which was used in the notorious WannaCry ransomware attack. Despite multiple patches being released, many users have failed to update their systems ...more
Sometimes you need a password to gain access to an older running Windows system. Maybe it's a machine in your basement you forgot about or a locked machine that belonged to a disgruntled employee. Maybe you just want to try out your pentesting skills. When you need to access ...more
After installing Ubuntu as your primary OS, you should have protected against USB Rubber Ducky payloads, defended against hard drive forensics, and reduced the overall attack surface against physical strikes. When defending against network-based attacks, you'll want to minimiz ...more
Since Ive started to learn about nmap and metasploit and other tools I was learning well but I had one problem, I had nothing to practice it on. As a result I asked someone about my problem and they told me about Vulnhub. It's a great way to practice. Its good beginners and pe ...more
The moment arrives when you finally pop a shell on the web server you've been working on, only you find yourself in a strange environment with limited functionality. Restricted shells are often used as an additional line of defense and can be frustrating for an attacker to stu ...more
A PirateBox creates a network that allows users to communicate wirelessly, connecting smartphones and laptops even when surrounding infrastructure has been disabled on purpose or destroyed in a disaster. Using a Raspberry Pi, we will make a wireless offline server that hosts f ...more
SSH is a powerful tool with more uses than simply logging into a server. This protocol, which stands for Secure Shell, provides X11 forwarding, port forwarding, secure file transfer, and more. Using SSH port forwarding on a compromised host with access to a restricted network ...more
SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer. It's an encryption standard used on most sites' login pages to avoid their users' passwords being packet sniffed in simple plain-text format. This keeps the users safe by having all of that traffic encrypted over an "https" connection. So, w ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! I have tried to emphasize throughout this "Hack Like a Pro" series that good reconnaissance is critical to effective hacking. As you have seen in many of these hacks, the techniques that we use are VERY specific to the: Operating system, Serv ...more
So much information exists online that it's easy to get lost in data while researching. Understanding the bigger picture can take a lot of time and energy, but narrowing the question to one that's easy to answer is the first step of any investigation. That's why analysts use o ...more
In my previous article, we learned how to generate a vulnerable virtual machine using SecGen to safely and legally practice hacking. In this tutorial, we will put it all together, and learn how to actually hack our practice VM. This will provide some insight into the methodolo ...more
Hello my anxious hackers, the week has started and here we begin a new series that I think will help many here and not only, for those that have the opportunity to follow our tutorials but they are not yet part of the community. Don't be a script-kid? what do you mean? In pro ...more
As we're all aware, recon is vital to a successful hack. We need to know everything we can about the target in order to perform the best possible attack. Port scanning is a basic recon concept that is introduced very early in learning proper reconnoissance. The issue with port ...more
Greetings comrades! Great leader has ordered that we gain intel on a website owned by the opposition. For all general purposes we will be scanning nmap.org because they really don't care if Big Brother decides to perform a whois on their IP. We will be using Dmitry for the sca ...more
It's been said time and time again: reconnaissance is perhaps the most critical phase of an attack. It's especially important when preparing an attack against a database since one wrong move can destroy every last bit of data, which usually isn't the desired outcome. Metasploi ...more
File permissions can get tricky on Linux and can be a valuable avenue of attack during privilege escalation if things aren't configured correctly. SUID binaries can often be an easy path to root, but sifting through all of the defaults can be a massive waste of time. Luckily, ...more
The next libSSH or OpenSSH exploit may be just around the corner. Keep your SSH service out of Shodan's database before hackers find new ways to bypass the password protecting the server. Shodan has been called the "hacker's search engine" because it's literally a searchable ...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
With the number of web applications out there today, it comes as no surprise that there are just as many vulnerabilities waiting for hackers to discover. Finding those vulnerabilities can be a difficult task, but there are plenty of tools available to make the process easier. ...more
Automation has been a buzz word for quite some time now, but the principles behind it are as strong as ever. For a hacker or pentester, Bash scripting is one form of automation that cannot be ignored. Virtually any command that can be run from the terminal can be scripted — an ...more
Many popular IoT devices have terrible security. For instance, a hacker who's on the same Wi-Fi network as a Sonos speaker can assume direct control over the device's behavior. If an IoT device doesn't secure the messages used to control it over a network, it's easy for somebo ...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
You may not know it, but the IPv4 address of your computer contains tons of useful information about whatever Wi-Fi network you're on. By knowing what your IPv4 address and subnet mask are telling you, you can easily scan the whole network range, locate the router, and discove ...more
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Throughout this series on Metasploit, and in most of my hacking tutorials here on Null Byte that use Metasploit (there are many; type "metasploit" into the search bar and you will find dozens), I have focused primarily on just two types of ...more
Russian cyber disinformation campaigns have many missions, but one of particular interest is using technology to monitor, influence, and disrupt online communications surrounding culturally sensitive topics or protests. The ability to watch these events, and even filter positi ...more
Most companies have services like employee login portals, internal-only subdomains, and test servers they would prefer to keep private. Red teams and white hat hackers can find these obscure and often vulnerable services using a tool designed to help protect users from fraudul ...more