Power Byte

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

Hak5's products get a lot of attention. Popping up in popular shows like Mr. Robot, their hacking tools are bold proof of concepts with space built into the design for the community to add their own tweaks and modifications. On Friday, Oct. 27, Null Byte attended the Hak5 rele ...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

I've done numerous tutorials in Null Byte demonstrating the power of Metasploit's meterpreter. With the meterpreter on the target system, you have nearly total command of the victim. As a result, several of you have asked me for a complete list of commands available for the m ...more

We're living in a world that runs on Big Data. As the driving force behind everything from self-driving cars and Google algorithms to the latest medical technology and financial platforms, massive sets of increasingly complex data lie at the heart of today's most exciting and ...more

A powered-off MacBook can be compromised in less than three minutes. With just a few commands, it's possible for a hacker to extract a target's password hash and crack it without their knowledge. The goal in this article is to acquire a target's .plist file which contains 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

PirateBox is a great way to communicate with others nearby when cellular and Wi-Fi networks aren't available. With it, you can anonymously share any kind of media or document and even talk to one another by voice — without being online. However, it needs a Raspberry Pi, which ...more

When you don't have a steady cellular signal or immediate Wi-Fi access but need to communicate with others around you, you can set up an off-the-grid voice communications network using a Raspberry Pi and an Android app. There are apps such as Bridgefy that will create a mesh ...more

After a hacker has configured Metasploit on a remote private server, created a resource script for automation, and created a simple payload, he or she can begin the process of remotely controlling someone's Windows 10 computer with just a few moments of physical access — even ...more

Connecting to your headless Raspberry Pi on the go typically requires a network connection or carrying around bulky peripheral hardware like a screen and keyboard. With the help of an old-school connecting standard, though, you can log into your Pi from any computer using a si ...more

There are two types of bad USBs out there. One lets you trick the computer into thinking it's a keyboard or other USB device, and the other goes straight over malicious into computer killing territory. Last year, Russian security researcher Dark Purple designed a USB stick th ...more

While hackers know and love the Raspberry Pi, many don't know of its cheaper cousin, the microcontroller. Unlike a Pi, which can be used more or less like a regular computer, microcontrollers like the Wi-Fi connected ESP8266 require some necessary programming skill to master. ...more

Fireworks are the best part about the Fourth of July and other celebrations, but they can easily cause accidental injuries. It's both safer and more fun to set them off remotely, so we'll hack some standard fireworks with nichrome wire, a relay, and an Arduino to ignite remote ...more

It's easy to have your password stolen. Important people like executives, government workers, journalists, and activists face sophisticated phishing attacks to compromise their online accounts, often targeting Google account credentials. To reduce this risk, Google created the ...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

Surveillance is always a useful tool in a hacker's arsenal, whether deployed offensively or defensively. Watching targets yourself isn't always practical, and traditional surveillance camera systems can be costly, lacking in capabilities, or both. Today, we will use motionEyeO ...more

An ESP32-based microcontroller with a camera is an amazing platform for video, but not all modules are created equal. We'll go over the pros and cons of some of the popular low-cost camera modules you can use with ESP32-based development boards, as well as what features they s ...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

Hackers and makers are often grouped under the same label. While hackers draw on computer science skills to write programs and find bugs, makers use electrical engineering to create hardware prototypes from microprocessor boards like the Arduino. We'll exercise both sets of sk ...more

If you need to hack an Android device, try a remote administration tool. Known more familiarly as a RAT, there are open-source RATs that are barebones and exorbitantly priced RATs that are more polished. There are also low-cost and polished RATs that aren't intended to be RATs ...more

Aircraft equipped with ADS-B are constantly shouting their location into the radio void, along with other useful unauthenticated and unencrypted data. In this guide, we will make an ADS-B receiver using a Raspberry Pi with a software-defined radio (SDR) dongle, which we can us ...more

As pentesters and hackers, we're going to be working with text frequently — wordlists, configuration files, etc. A lot of this we'll be doing on our machine, where we have access to whatever editor we prefer. The rest of it will be on remote machines, where the tools for editi ...more

Greetings my fellow aspiring hackers, Huh :) . Its that part of the year when friends and family come together for reunions and family gathering. Christmas is the only time of the year where the sensation and desire to bond and repair lost and broken relationships becomes str ...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 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

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

Null Byte readers are no strangers to the powers and benefits that come from learning how to code. By knowing only a handful of programming languages and platforms, an intrepid developer can create everything from best-selling apps to spyware in the comfort of his or her own h ...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

Hacker's are always looking for new ways to exploit systems and exfiltrate passwords, even in hashed form. Sophisticated brute-force attacks powered by high-end GPUs can perform millions of password attempts per second. But Ubuntu and Debian users aren't completely helpless. T ...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

Everyone from first responders to hotel cleaning staff use radios operating in the sub-megahertz range to communicate, often without even encoding the transmission. While encoding and encryption are increasingly used in radio communication, an RTL-SDR adapter and smartphone ar ...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

Don't think because your MacBook is using FileVault disk encryption your device is secure or immune to hackers. Here's how to find out if that FileVault password is strong enough to withstand an attack from a motivated attacker. FileVault, created by Apple in 2003, is a hard ...more

With Virtual Network Computing, you don't need to carry a spare keyboard, mouse, or monitor to use your headless computer's full graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, you can connect remotely to it through any available computer or smartphone. Virtual Network Computing, be ...more

When we are building programs that communicate over a network, how can we keep our data private? The last thing we want is some other lousy hacker sniffing our packets, so how do we stop them? The easy answer: encryption. However, this is a very wide-ranging answer. Today we'r ...more

Social engineering makes headlines because human behavior is often the weakest link of even well-defended targets. Automated social engineering tools can help reclusive hackers touch these techniques, but the study of how to hack human interactions in person is often ignored. ...more

Did you know Kali 1.0.8? You probably did, and you probably know about the EFI boot option that has been added. That's a very interesting new feature because it allows Kali to be easily booted on Mac too, and every EFI-supported device. First three preview lines gone? As alw ...more

The ESP32-CAM is a convenient little camera module with a lot of built-in power, and you can turn one into an inconspicuous spy camera to hide in any room. There's only one issue: it does omit a USB port. That makes it a little harder to program, but with an ESP32-based board, ...more

This month, the power of artificial intelligence will be coming to more augmented reality developers as a leader in the game and 3D software development space and a major force behind the current school of cloud-based AI have officially announced a new partnership. In a post ...more

According to a new study, the majority of smartphone users check their devices 150 times a day. While that number may seem incredibly high at first glance, the influx of notifications and amount of social media apps available reduce the initial shock and make the number seem n ...more

Computers all over the world rely on a program called "libssh" to use the SSH communications protocol, which allows trusted users to log in and administer computers remotely. Due to a flaw in libssh, fooling a computer into granting SSH access is as easy as telling it you alre ...more

When hacking into a network during a penetration test, it can sometimes be useful to create your own wireless AP simply by plugging a Pi into an available Ethernet port. With this setup, you have your own backdoor wireless connection to the network in a matter of seconds. Crea ...more

Virtual private networks, or VPNs, are popular for helping you stay anonymous online by changing your IP address, encrypting traffic, and hiding your location. However, common IoT devices, media players, and smart TVs are hard to connect to a VPN, but we have a solution: Turn ...more

Cryptography is the science of keeping secrets, or more specifically, the science of disguising them. As a point of fact, cryptography has progressed quite a bit farther and now encompasses file and message integrity, sender authentication, and pseudo-random number generators. ...more

There are countless ways in which you can turn your love of tech and coding into a full-fledged career — from developing apps and websites as a freelancer to working in the IT departments of small startups or major tech companies. But one of the best ways that you can put your ...more

It's nearly impossible not to be at least somewhat familiar with Microsoft Excel. While it's needed for many office jobs and data analysis fields, hackers could also benefit from improving their spreadsheet skills. Many white hats already know some of the essential Excel hacks ...more

If you've ever wiped your computer without having a proper backup of your operating system, or just wanted to cause some havoc online, chances are you've had to rely on Linux to help you out, specifically the Ubuntu distro. Ubuntu doesn't get a lot of love compared to powerho ...more

The new Moto X may not have a lot going for it when it comes to hardware, but there are some pretty cool software features that makes it a tempting device. One of these cool features is its Active Display notifications that appear on the lock screen. This feature gives immedi ...more

The only thing better than programming MicroPython is programming MicroPython over Wi-Fi. So once you set up MicroPython on a microcontroller and have it on its own power source, you won't need to use a data cable to connect to it whenever you need to interact with it, program ...more

One of the first steps when pentesting a website should be scanning for hidden directories. It is essential for finding valuable information or potential attack vectors that might otherwise be unseen on the public-facing site. There are many tools out there that will perform t ...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

While password cracking and WPS setup PIN attacks get a lot of attention, social engineering attacks are by far the fastest way of obtaining a Wi-Fi password. One of the most potent Wi-Fi social engineering attacks is Wifiphisher, a tool that blocks the internet until desperat ...more

As we near the one-year anniversary of its release (and the inevitable unveiling of its successor), the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 remains a device that packs quite a punch when it comes to hardware. It boasts a 2.3Ghz CPU and was the first mobile phone ever to house 3GBs of RAM. S ...more

Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Now that we're familiar with the technologies, terminology, and the aircrack-ng suite, we can finally start hacking Wi-Fi. Our first task will be to creating an evil twin access point. Many new hackers are anxious to crack Wi-Fi passwords t ...more

This is my first tutorial on this website. So, if you think anything to be wrong, just place it in the comments. First of all, it was pretty disappointing to see that there is nothing on 'Cryptocurrency' on Null Byte, owing to the fact that how convenient, digital, anonymous ...more

APOLOGIZE Hello my masters and colleagues, first of all I would like to apologize for my absence during the past month, to say that i was busy with some projects and decide to leave the white-side for a while and made some visits on the dark-side(every good COP has a dealer f ...more

Welcome back, my nascent hackers! One of the many reasons I write this blog is to help you keep the Internet free and open. Throughout human history, whenever a government or other powerful entity has wanted to subjugate a people or group, the first thing they do is isolate t ...more

Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! My recent posts here in Null Byte have been very technical in nature, so I thought that I'd have a little fun with this one. Have you ever had an annoying neighbor whose dog barks all night, who has loud parties that keep you awake, or who ...more

If you're a frequent Null Byte reader, chances are you're already up to speed with at least one or two programming languages or development platforms. But in a world that's becoming increasingly reliant on high-powered apps and responsive websites, knowing the fundamentals of ...more