One of the most exciting features in iOS 11 was the fully revamped Control Center, which improved the overall interface visually, made it one page only, and finally made it possible to customize what controls actually appear within it. Customizable controls was previously only ...more
Before many games make it to the US-based iOS App Store, they get "soft launched" in a smaller country to get real-world testing for bugs. It's a pilot program, so to speak, as countries like Vietnam or the Philippines have far fewer iPhone users than the US, thus offer a more ...more
GitHub is an extremely popular site that allows developers to store source code and interact with other users about their projects. Anyone can download public, open-source files on GitHub manually or with Git, and anyone can fork off someone's project to expand or improve it i ...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
Quick Look, first introduced in 2007, is an instant preview feature on the Mac operating system that lets you view files and folders without opening them up. Just highlight a file, like a picture or text document, then press the spacebar on your keyboard to get a speedy previe ...more
Welcome back, everyone! In this lesson, I'm going to go over the use of the echo function and variables, as well as basic syntax. You will need: A text editor - I personally recommend the free (and amazing) Notepad ++, but you can use any text editor you want, even Windows' ...more
What's your top pet peeve? Open-mouthed chewing? Nail biting and knuckle cracking? The sound of silverware scraping? Or perhaps it's a bigger behavior, like leaving the toilet seat up? We all have our own distaste for certain actions, and they can grate on our nerves like no ...more
Every time Windows gets a significant update, the vast majority of existing tweaking utilities become obsolete. For every option that you fine-tuned with one of these tools on Windows 7 or 8, there's a change in the registry or system settings that cause your tweaks to now poi ...more
We recently lost Grooveshark, the free music streaming service that supplied users with a huge catalog of free music anytime, anywhere. Since its shutdown, I have been scrambling to find a half-decent alternative, and my expectations were more than exceeded when I found NetEas ...more
Notes on iOS has never been a particularly great app due to a lack of overall features compared to other note-taking apps like Evernote or Microsoft OneNote. But in iOS 9, Notes has been revamped with many new features, including a new user interface, text formatting options, ...more
Super Bowl Sunday is just around the corner. With 111.5 million viewers tuning in last year (112.6 if you count streaming), which broke another record that it previously set for the most-watched television event in U.S. history, it's safe to say that most of us will be watchin ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Eluding and evading antivirus software and intrusion detection systems is one of the most critical tasks of the hacker. As soon as a new exploit is developed and discovered, the AV and IDS developers build a signature for the attack, which ...more
Welcome back, my novice hackers! In my series on cracking passwords, I began by showing off some basic password-cracking principles; developed an efficient password-cracking strategy; demonstrated how to use Hashcat, one of the most powerful password-cracking programs; and sh ...more
Arcades have long faded away from popularity, but their legacy is being kept alive thanks to emulators and the avid fans who grew up loading quarters into all of those coin-op games. Although nothing beats an actual arcade environment, my favorite emulator from the early 2000s ...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
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! In continuing my series on digital forensics using Kali, I want to introduce you to two complementary tools, both built right into Kali Linux. These are Brian Carrier's tools Autopsy and Sleuth Kit. Carrier is one of the leading authoriti ...more
It's the biggest day of the year for all things Google. Their developer conference, dubbed Google I/O, gives us a peak at what the guys at Mountain View have been working on over the course of the past year, and this year, Android was center stage. The central theme of this y ...more
With the release of the Samsung Galaxy S5 right around the corner, the first full system dump has been released by Sammobile. As the inevitable ports of functioning apps slowly begin to leak, today we've got a non-app aspect of the system and the one that tends to leak first—r ...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 greenhorn hackers! In a previous tutorial on hacking databases, I showed you how to find online databases and then how to enumerate the databases, tables, and columns. In this guide, we'll now exfiltrate, extract, remove—whatever term you prefer—the data from ...more
One of the biggest reasons we jailbreak our iPads and iPhones is to add and change themes. Apple locks down a lot of how we can personalize our devices, and while the stock look is easy on the eyes, sooner or later we may realize how boring it can be. Now, it doesn't have to b ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! So many readers in the Null Byte community have been asking me questions about evading detection and hacking undetected that I decided to start a new series on digital forensics. I applaud each of you for your concern, as the last thing I ...more
Xposed, by XDA developer rovo89, is a framework for your Samsung Galaxy S4 (or other Android device) that lets you add tweaks and customizations to your ROM (either stock or custom) without any real hassle. This pretty much means that your GS4 can have the features of a custo ...more
While Siri has never been my favorite, after using her in the new iOS 7, I have definitely become a fan. If you want to know why, check out the newest cool features that Siri has to offer! Video: . Use Siri to Manage Your Control Center & Settings Although the Control Center ...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
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 budding hackers! Previous to this tutorial, we've focused mostly on hacking the target system. If we're successful in owning the target system, we'll then want to make certain that the system administrator doesn't know we were there, and that he or she cannot ...more
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! As part of my series on Wi-Fi hacking, I want to next look at denial-of-service (DoS) attacks, and DoSing a wireless access point (AP). There are a variety of ways to do this, but in this tutorial we'll be sending repeated deauthentication f ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! In one of my recent articles, I showed you how to install BackTrack as a dual boot system on a Windows computer. In this tutorial, I will walk you through BackTrack, giving you a tour of the most salient features for the hacker-to-be. NOTE ...more
Welcome back , my fledgling hackers! Lately, I've been focusing more on client-side hacks. While web servers, database servers, and file servers have garnered increased protection, the client-side remains extremely vulnerable, and there is much to teach. This time, we'll look ...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
There's nothing worse than holding an ice cold brewski on a hot summer day and having no way to open it. If you're a Bud fan, you'll have no problem opening the bottle because most mass-market beers have twist-off caps. But if you have a taste for finer, more expensive brews, ...more
Every single photo you take carries with it a considerable amount of seemingly "invisible" yet important information known as metadata. Although metadata is usually helpful to sort your photographs by location and date, that same information could potentially be used against y ...more
For the last three years, Apple has hosted its Worldwide Developers Conference at the San Jose Convention Center, but thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, WWDC 2020 is now an online-only event. So what can you expect from the new virtual format and when and how can you watch the k ...more
Apple's Reminders app has always been an underrated yet useful productivity tool for iPhone. It's not as powerful as many third-party to-do apps, but it makes it easy to keep track of a few basic tasks, and it's integrated deeply with iOS, macOS, and watchOS. In iOS 13, it's e ...more
When you're gaming on your Android phone, does it sometimes feel "slow" and you can't figure out why? That means a drop in performance, which is when the frame rate dips, causing some noticeable stutters and lag. There's not really a way to know what's wrong unless you made th ...more
In Apple Music, loving and disliking songs is a great way to teach Apple's subscription service what type of tunes you like and which you don't. While it also seems like it should be an excellent way to keep track of songs you enjoy in the wild, there's no clear way to view al ...more
As part of the iOS 11 update, Apple added a document scanner function that creates high-quality digital copies of physical documents, but it was only available inside the Notes app. With iOS 13, Apple has built its scanner right into the Files app, enabling you to quickly crea ...more
TWRP is a name many are familiar with since it allows your Android device to install any custom file of your choosing. You can create a NANDroid backup to keep your data safe or even use Magisk to achieve full root access. In fact, TWRP is often seen as the gateway to modding ...more
The Pixel 3a runs smoothly out of the box already, but installing a custom kernel can supercharge your experience even more. From fine-tuned CPU tweaks for boosting performance or battery life to adjusting the display colors for your screen how you want, ElementalX kernel can ...more
There is no shortage of defenses against cross-site scripting (XSS) since it is so prevalent on the web today. Filters are one of the most common implementations used to prevent this type of attack, usually configured as a blacklist of known bad expressions or based on regex e ...more
With just one line of Ruby code embedded into a fake PDF, a hacker can remotely control any Mac computer from anywhere in the world. Creating the command is the easy part, but getting the target to open the code is where a hacker will need to get creative. Ruby is just one wa ...more
MacOS isn't known as an ideal operating system for hacking without customization, but it includes native tools that allow easy control of the Wi-Fi radio for packet sniffing. Changing channels, scanning for access points, and even capturing packets all can be done from the com ...more
For the second time in a row, Apple pushed out a new iOS 12 developer beta on a Monday, and for the first time this round, they've done it only one week after the last one. While the August 6 release of iOS 12 developer beta 6 doesn't contain a wealth of updates, there are sti ...more
Using Netcat to backdoor a macOS device has its short-comings. If the compromised Mac goes to sleep, the Netcat background process will occasionally fail to terminate correctly; This leaves Netcat running infinitely in the background and the attacker with no new way into the d ...more
If you want to use your iPhone with another carrier, all you have to do is contact the original carrier to request an unlock, which is usually granted in a few days. Unfortunately, you need to meet specific criteria to officially carrier-unlock your iPhone, like paying off the ...more
One of the most critical bugs to come out in the last five years was Shellshock, a vulnerability which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via the Unix Bash shell remotely. This vulnerability has been around for a while now, but due to the ubiquity of Unix machines conn ...more
The misconception that macOS is more secure than the Windows operating system is far from the truth. With just one small command, a hacker can completely take over a MacBook and control it remotely. The sheer volume of Windows computers currently in operation around the world ...more
There are currently 27 available Animoji to choose from in iOS 13, but you're not limited to Apple's animated emoji characters — you can make your own. They're called Memoji, an available feature since iOS 12, and they're highly customizable. Think of Memoji avatars as person ...more
Google, Amazon, and Facebook are always listening. But what's worse? Hackers are listening, too. Windows PCs are particularly vulnerable, but with a few simple commands, a remote attacker can even take over the microphone on someone's Mac computer, streaming audio and listenin ...more
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of programming languages and variations of those languages that exist. Currently, in the augmented reality space, it seems the Microsoft-created C# has won out as the overall top language of choice. While there are other options like JavaS ...more
If you've contemplated what's possible with augmented reality on mobile devices, and your interest has been piqued enough to start building your own Android-based AR app, then this is a great place to to acquire the basic beginner skills to complete it. Once we get everything ...more
The iPhone vs. Android debate is almost as old as smartphones themselves. While there are a number of reasons to skew towards one operating system or the other, the Samsung Galaxy S9 models have a ton of great features that help set them apart from Apple's iPhones. The coolest ...more
With ultra competitive games like Fortnite Battle Royale and PUBG taking the mobile world by storm, gamers are looking for ways to get a leg up on the competition. One of the biggest advantages you can give yourself is the ability to aim and shoot while on the move, but that's ...more
As cheesy as it sounds, #HODL became a thing for a reason. A lack of discipline when dealing with cryptocurrencies can lead to impulse buys and panic selling, and ultimately, depleted funds. Luckily, Coinbase has a way to safeguard your cryptocurrency savings to not only prote ...more
Cross-compilation allows you to develop for one platform (like Kali) and compile to run on a different platform (such as Windows). For developers, it means that they can work on their platform of choice and compile their code for their target platform. For hackers, it means we ...more
OpenVAS is a powerful vulnerability assessment tool. Forked from Nessus after Nessus became a proprietary product, OpenVAS stepped in to fill the niche. OpenVAS really shines for information gathering in large networks where manual scanning to establish a foothold can be time- ...more
Changing your Facebook profile picture to a video is a great way to stand out from the crowd. A regular video file isn't the only option, though — if you're an iPhone user, you can also upload a Live Photo as your new profile picture to add more pizzazz to your Facebook page. ...more
Now that we've talked about encryption and managing your passwords, let's continue this series on getting your Mac ready for hacking by turning our attention to the terminal. The terminal is a key component of any pentester's setup. We're going to be spending a lot of time wo ...more
Now that we've learned about keeping all our data safe with encryption, it's time to continue progressing through getting your Mac set up for hacking. Just like most other people, we hackers have a lot of credentials to manage. We're also human, so we have a hard time creatin ...more