In our previous article, we learned how to take advantage of a feature, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to run malicious code when an MS Word document is opened. Because Microsoft built DDE into all of its Office products as a way to transfer data one time or continuously between ...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
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is the de facto wireless protocol choice by many wearables developers, and much of the emerging internet of things (IoT) market. Thanks to it's near ubiquity in modern smartphones, tablets, and computers, BLE represents a large and frequently insecur ...more
One of the best things about Android is the ability to customize your phone to your liking. From changing the layout of icons to finding the perfect wallpaper to reflect your current mood, there's a wide range of tools to make your phone yours. One of the easiest ways is to t ...more
The dark web is an intimidating place for a newbie hacker, but it's a powerful tool once you've learned to navigate it safely. To help you out with that, this guide will cover some need-to-know information for traversing the dark corners of the internet while keeping your iden ...more
A remote administration tool, or RAT, is a piece of software used for remotely controlling machines. They are commonly used by tech support to gain remote access for troubleshooting purposes, but RATs are also an important part of a hacker's advanced persistent threat (APT) to ...more
Imagine for a moment that a VPN is like putting on a disguise for your computer. This disguise works to change your IP address, secure your traffic with encryption, and mask your location to bypass regional restrictions. This makes it a helpful tool for both whistleblowers and ...more
When you have an infection, a doctor prescribes antibiotics to make the bacteria that causes it disappear. Sounds like a good idea, but the disappearance of microorganisms that have inhabited humans for millennia could be driving rising numbers of serious illness and debilitat ...more
I think I hate this game. I don't really see how you can play more than 15 minutes of Tap Mania without smashing your head into a wall. You do nothing but tap. Tap, tap, tap. At least they got the name right. My editor asked me "would you enjoy this game more if you followed ...more
One of the most popular things to do on Snapchat is to earn a Snapstreak. This occurs when you and one other friend have sent snaps (not chatted) to each other within 24 hours for at least three consecutive days. One you've passed the three-day mark, then you and your friend w ...more
Last June, Meta began shipping their Meta 2 mixed reality headset, to the delight of many. In September, it was announced that shipping had been delayed until the end of the year. Then it appeared that Christmas would bring something magical when Meta sent out an email four da ...more
A router is the core of anyone's internet experience, but most people don't spend much time setting up this critical piece of hardware. Old firmware, default passwords, and other configuration issues continue to haunt many organizations. Exploiting the poor, neglected computer ...more
Walsh, a new community under construction on 7,200 acres of former ranch land near Fort Worth, Texas, will one day contain 15,000 homes. To sell prospective home buyers on the development before it is fully built, Republic Property Group is leaning on technology. A high-spee ...more
Surveying a target's Wi-Fi infrastructure is the first step to understanding the wireless attack surface you have to work with. Wardriving has been around since the '90s and combines GPS data and Wi-Fi signal data to create accurate, in-depth maps of any nearby Wi-Fi networks ...more
Because of Android's new SafetyNet system, certain apps can now block rooted users or prevent you from accessing them altogether — but at least for now, there are still ways around these restrictions. You can pass most of SafetyNet's checks with Magisk and systemless root, bu ...more
From Farmville to selling a company to Google, Amitt Mahajan has been through the startup ringer. Now, as managing partner with Presence Capital, he's funding the future of augmented and mixed reality. With interest in 3D graphics, Mahajan started his career working on game e ...more
One thing that I got more and more excited about as we got closer and closer to the Microsoft Build 2017 developers conference was finally learning about the new Acer Windows Mixed Reality head-mounted displays (HMD). Brandon Bray, Principal Group Program Manager at Microsoft, ...more
Take a close look at the image above. These bugs spread a deadly parasite that infects thousands of people each year. They also live in the US, and it's important to know where they are and whether you need to worry that they're carrying a dangerous infection. Triatoma bugs a ...more
It just keeps getting harder to enjoy all of the benefits of root without sacrificing features. Thanks to SafetyNet, we've lost the ability to use Android Pay, Pokémon GO, and even Snapchat to an extent. But the most recent news on this front is perhaps worst of all: Netflix h ...more
Pot, weed, bud, herb – whatever you want to call it, the green earthy treat makes everything way more fun. Now that marijuana is legal to some extent in more than half of all US states, we thought it was high time to showcase some apps that enhance your experience with the con ...more
When making a convincing mixed reality experience, audio consideration is a must. Great audio can transport the HoloLens wearer to another place or time, help navigate 3D interfaces, or blur the lines of what is real and what is a hologram. Using a location-based trigger (hots ...more
It's March once again, and while that might signify the beginning of spring for some, basketball fans have this month marked on their calendars for one good reason: NCAA March Madness. Though the tournament is already underway, the Sweet Sixteen leg begins Thursday, March 23, ...more
YouTube is so famous it needs no introduction, but its mischievous clone, YouTube++, sure does. The latter's been tweaked to include hacks not found in the regular version, including background playback, ad blocking, and the ability to download videos directly onto your iPhone ...more
The '90s were a great decade to be alive. Before the internet became a high-availability service, we were untethered from the bombardment of media present in today's culture. Children ran through the streets with levels of physical exertion beyond what's required to capture fi ...more
In the past, to see a pre-constructed state of the house that you would one day live in, you had to be able to read blueprints or hire an artist to sketch it out. Later came the ability to have a 3D rendering of that house on a screen, but you'd still have to work hard to envi ...more
It's that time of year again. The world's largest electronics companies are sending representatives to the annual Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, and for gadget lovers like us, that means we'll get our first look at some of this year's biggest upcoming flagship smart ...more
Now that we've set up Vuforia in Unity, we can work on the more exciting aspects of making physical objects come to life on the HoloLens. In this guide, we will choose an image (something that you physically have in your home), build our ImageTarget database, and then set up o ...more
There's an adage that says "Every plan, no matter how great, goes out the window as soon as you're punched in the face." While our lives are (hopefully) not violent, that saying can easily translate to our daily living. That punch in the face can come in various forms, mainly ...more
With any continuously active software, it can start to become fairly complex after a few years of updates. New features and revisions both get layered into a thick mesh of menu systems and controls that even pro users can get bewildered by. If you are new to a certain applicat ...more
Now that we've got all of our software installed, we're going to proceed with the next step in our HoloLens Dev 101 series—starting a fresh project and building it into a Holographic application. Then we will output the application to the HoloLens Emulator so we can see it in ...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
Now that Google has announced its new Pixel smartphones, folks who rushed to buy an iPhone 7 might be experiencing a bit of buyer's remorse. The new Pixel and Pixel XL are packed to the brim with cutting-edge features and top-notch hardware, and Google seems to be taking direc ...more
If maintaining privacy is an ongoing battle, the front line is your smartphone. Apple included several new security features in iOS 10, but at the same time, some of the best new functionality comes with potential privacy trade-offs that everyone needs to understand. New feat ...more
Google has already issued a few updates to Android 7.0 Nougat. There aren't many headlining features, as these minor updates are mostly bug fixes and performance improvements. But there's a few security enhancements as well, so staying up-to-date with the latest patches is imp ...more
The newest version of Apple's mobile operating system, iOS 10, has been out for about a month now. But like every year beforehand, some of you who updated will not be happy with the latest and "greatest" iOS version. If that happens to be the case for you, you've still got a ...more
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! Generally, you will want to perform a vulnerability scan before doing a penetration test. Vulnerability scanners contain a database of all known vulnerabilities and will scan your machine or network to see whether those vulnerabilities app ...more
Hello fellow Nullbytiens, today we will be talking about IRC again (if you haven't read OTW's post about head over there now)and more specifically about using 1 nickname with multiple devices or IRC clients. IRC was a protocol that was developed in 1988 and doesn't support us ...more
Welcome back my networking geeks. In this part we are going to keep discussing about IP Addressing and I hope after you finish reading it you will become an IP wizzard. So in the last tutorial we did what we did without the use of our default gateway. To be honest, in really ...more
Step 1: What Exploit Development Is and Why Should I Be Interested on About This Topic An exploit is a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur ...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
Considering that nearly half a million brand new apps were published to the Google Play Store in 2015, you can definitely call it a banner year for Android development. In fact, it's getting to the point where we're a bit spoiled as end users, since we've grown to expect somet ...more
The Microsoft Surface has been the go-to device for many professional artists since its initial release back in 2012. Since then, the Surface line has continued to offer customers a portable, high-powered machine that's a near perfect value for both casual and professional art ...more
Greetings my fellow aspiring hackers, It's still Christmas and we have a lot of things and hugs and kisses and ... to share ( you know the things that you do ). I have never done this before but I just felt to encourage you on the quest for knowledge, security and defence, sk ...more
UPDATE: This post is outdated, the latest version with the correct links and updated instructions can be found at my blog, here - https://techkernel.org/2015/12/19/embed-metasploit-payload-in-apk-manually/ Hi guys, I'm here again with my second tutorial, as I promised. Metas ...more
Hello null_byters, after some time out here we are again with another tutorial, continuing our beautiful series, today we will write our first real world bash script. BEFORE WE START Before we start today's lesson Let's recap what we learned in the previous lesson, right now ...more
As one of the most powerful Android apps for connecting your phone or tablet to your other devices in various ways, Pushbullet had always been a fan—and Gadget Hacks—favorite. However, ever since late last year, many of the app's popular and once-free features now require a c ...more
Amazon is slowly trying to gain as much influence in the tech world as it has in the consumer market, and with the Amazon Fire HD 7, they have their eyes set on taking on the "budget tablet" space. For the amount of money you spend on the Fire HD 7, you get a pretty decent ta ...more
Yes, screen savers are fun to look at for a few seconds, but those animations actually used to serve a purpose beyond simple entertainment. In older CRT and plasma monitors, and even newer OLED ones, leaving a static image on the screen for an extended period of time could cr ...more
It's truly amazing how far smartphone camera hardware has come in such a short period of time. It took roughly 5 years to advance the image processing capabilities from a pixelated mess to the crisp and clear photos we can take today. This reaches well beyond the megapixel spe ...more
Google has finally released the next version of the world's leading operating system—Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This latest iteration isn't as much of a visual overhaul as Lollipop was, but it packs in more new functionality than almost any update before it. Awesome features lik ...more
It always looks different when it's not about you. The Internet is our world's Alterego. Those many bits don't really make sense unless we want them to be valuable, to mean something. Our rush to the future is too fast to keep up with. Denying technology is ignorance, isolat ...more
Hello all, this is my first submission to null byte! I noticed something a little strange, particularly that whenever Meterpreter is discussed, it is virtually always in the context of Windows. Granted, the Windows Meterpreter is more powerful than the version that can run on ...more
I have a personal rule when it comes to an app's interface: If it doesn't follow Android's design guidelines, it was probably written with Apple's iOS in mind first and foremost. And if that truly is the case, I almost take this as a personal insult. I'm not a second-class ci ...more
Checking the weather ranks among the most mundane but essential tasks you can do on your smartphone. Thankfully, both the iOS App Store and Google Play are loaded with weather apps that add some much needed spice to this daily routine, giving you less of a reason to be caught ...more
Greetings My Fellow Aspiring Hackers, Its been long since I last posted a tutorial. Its vacation and since I won't be coming home, I've decided to use my day for sharing. I was browsing through old posts and found OTW's article - Hack Like A Pro: How to Find the Exact Locatio ...more
Whether you're just getting your first Android, or are already on your fifth annual cycle of picking up the latest flagship, there is always the question of what to do after booting up your device for the first time. You can go the route of keeping your device the way the man ...more
There are a bunch of new and interesting features packed inside of Windows 10, but one of the most exciting ones is the Microsoft Edge web browser, the long-awaited replacement of Internet Explorer. While the "e" icon that you know so well will remain the same, albeit with a ...more
One of Android's biggest strengths, when compared to other mobile operating systems is its open file structure. Google introduced a built-in file manager with Marshmallow that provides basic file management, but like with most apps on Android, there are alternatives. Third-par ...more
Whether I'm in my car or making dinner, I always have music playing. And since I don't like to keep my headphones on me at all times, I end up using my Android's built-in speakers a good portion of the time. Companies like HTC know how much people use their phone's speakers, ...more
While Windows 10 is still a few weeks away from a public release, that doesn't mean you can't enjoy its brand new features right now. Anyone with an Insider Preview account can install Windows 10 on their computer. And that doesn't just go for those that own a Windows PC—Mac u ...more