Secure Your Network

You're sitting in your favorite café enjoying a hot cup of joe, then you open up your laptop or turn on your tablet computer to get to work, but as always you get sidetracked and head straight for Facebook. Someone just tagged you in a photo, so you check it out, then you see ...more

Firesheep caused quite a stir when it was released last October, giving both hackers and non-hackers instant access to people's account information when on a public Wi-Fi connection. When logged into an insecure website on the same network as someone with Firesheep, you're giv ...more

People sometimes ask me about the IT industry here in the states. These folks are usually either trying to get into a certain field, or looking to switch or move into another one. Right now, you may currently be a Computer Science major that will be graduating shortly and are ...more

For travelers on-the-go, or penny pinchers who like to surf the web for free in public places, there are necessary precautions one must take when accessing sensitive information over a public WiFi connection. For advice on doing this safely, check out Glenn Fleishmann'sguide t ...more

Leaving your wireless router at its default settings is a bad idea. The sad thing is, most people still do it. Once they've penetrated your network, hackers will change your router settings so they'll have an easy way back in. This allows them to change your network into a she ...more

Some interesting news this week, from Obama's new political ad, to the $20,000 payments by Cardinal Dolan. Take a look: Cardinal Dolan Quiet on $20K Payments to Pedophile Priests Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the archdiocese of New York is keeping quiet today after his old dioce ...more

Are you the expert hacker we're looking for? Do you have a great idea for an article on Null Byte? Do you have a passion to write, and more importantly... teach? We're officially looking for Null Byters on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the communi ...more

UPDATE: New York Giants WON! Super Bowl XLVI has concluded. The New York Giants beat the New England Patriots 21 to 17. If you missed the big game, there doesn't seem to be a full replay of all the action, but you can visit NBC.com or NFL.com to get information and video high ...more

This past Sunday, a group called Gnosis launched a massive hacker attack on Gawker media, one of the web's most popular blog networks (Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin and Fleshbot). 1.3 million registered users' passwords were compromised, and 188 ...more

Some say Nigel Richards is to SCRABBLE what Garry Kasparov is to chess, but that doesn't make him perfect. The New Zealender lost on Sunday to Pakistani scrabble champion Muhammad Sulaiman, in the Malta International Scrabble Open Championship 2010, played in Qawra, Malta (So ...more

For a moment, picture a situation where you want to host some files or images, but you do not want it traced back to you. Perhaps you're working on a project with others and need secure data storage. Anonymity is the new shield of the 21st century—and you best protect yourself ...more

There are so many hackers around these days, and they are becoming very smart. So smart that they have successfully taken down many government websites. The most recent attack was on the Department of Justice (DOJ). To read about the history of these hackers, check out Wikiped ...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

Another week has passed on the online battlefield as the CISPA legislation continues to grind away at our freedom. Here at Null Byte, we try to keep our community informed and knowledgeable at the same time—and that means creating content for them to learn from. After last we ...more

If Null Byte had a large Batman-like spotlight calling for help, we would definitely be using it right now. However, we don't, so this is my digital equivalent. Information security is a huge field, far too much for one man to cover adequately, so I need your help! Do you cod ...more

Having an SSH or Secure SHell to tunnel your traffic through is something we have talked about many times at Null Byte. As we know, it allows us to securely route and encrypt our traffic through a remote server, effectively anonymizing us and protecting our traffic from all fo ...more

Do you know how you are perceived by your peers? In real life and online? In the physical world, you could be seen as intelligent, thoughtful and hard-working, but on the Web you could be looked at as irrational, selfish and slothful. There's just something about the Internet ...more

In the first part of this series, we took a factual and technical look at the history of the Internet. I explained how all of these wires and servers got here in the first place. Obviously, a firm did not just create and build the Internet around 1995! Now that we know how the ...more

Introduction The 3 major anonymity networks on the Internet are Tor/Onionland, I2P and Freenet. If you feel confused on which one is the "best" one to use the answer is simple. Use all three! Each anonymity network is designed for a different specific purpose. One network al ...more

You want to put out a live web server, but you don't want to be owned in the process. An expert eye for security is not needed if you take a few basic steps in locking down the hatches. Most successful attacks today are not the complex, time-consuming tasks you might think, bu ...more

In my recent Darknet series, I attempted to connect the dots on the Deep Web. I covered the two largest anonymity networks on the Internet today, Tor and I2P. While my initial four articles were meant as an introduction, I ended up receiving a lot of interesting comments and m ...more

This weekend, hackers broke into the servers of the popular shoe shopping site Zappos, giving them access to the personal information of 24 million Zappos customers. The user data taken included names, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, the last fo ...more

+Nik Cubrilovic discovered last week that Facebook could track your web activities even after you logged out of your Facebook account. After some blatant denials from Facebook spokespeople, Facebook decided to fix the logout issue, but not before +Michael Arrington, on his new ...more

The community here on Null Byte has always been great and helpful in sharing their know-how, even before I took up admin duties in this World. I jumped at the chance of leading Null Byte because I enjoy teaching and informing people on all of the important need-to-know things ...more

Do you need to email your wife your Social Security number? Send confidential business plans to your partner in Thailand? Send your hacker buddies the recovered hashes from last night's breach? Try using GPG, a valuable and easy to use open-source encryption program. In my fi ...more

This is a two-part series to locking down the computer to provide maximum protection. Even though this guide will sound intrusive, we are talking about reality here. Extreme measures must be taken to protect our computers, especially when we have confidential documentation or ...more

If you're interested in bypassing Windows and Linux passwords, there is a great tool from the good people at Kryptoslogic. Have you ever forgotten your administrator password? Have you ever bought a used computer with a password on it? Well, Kryptoslogic have created a boot-di ...more

Spam is everywhere and Facebook is no exception. In fact, spammers are constantly stepping up their game by tricking unsuspecting Facebook users to participate in quizzes, games, apps, or "new features" that are actually dangerous computer viruses, spyware, or other trojan hor ...more

WonderHowTo is made up of niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects. Thanks to all of our active moderators and ...more

There are lots of people who want to stay anonymous online, and lots of reasons they want to do this. Staying anonymous on the internet isn't easy, and it's probably possible to trace almost anyone with enough time and resources. A lot of people think that they're completely s ...more

Your social security number, credit card information, and medical history can fall into the wrong hands if you're not careful about how and where you share your data online. If you really care about your data, there are tools and techniques you can utilize to protect yourself ...more

A weak password is one that is short, common, or easy to guess. Equally bad are secure but reused passwords that have been lost by negligent third-party companies like Equifax and Yahoo. Today, we will use Airgeddon, a wireless auditing framework, to show how anyone can crack ...more

An internet connection has become a basic necessity in our modern lives. Wireless hotspots (commonly known as Wi-Fi) can be found everywhere! If you have a PC with a wireless network card, then you must have seen many networks around you. Sadly, most of these networks are sec ...more

After numerous scandals like the Equifax data breach and the 2016 US election, cybersecurity has become a significant issue for Americans. Unfortunately, anytime we use our devices, we're open to a cyber attack — especially when we browse the web. However, there are ways that ...more

Over the past decade the Internet community has been witness to the rise of many new forms of online interaction. These new technologies have given rise to anonymous networks (like TOR), black markets within the deep web network (like the Silk Road), and even forms of digital ...more

Tor is an excellent obfuscation network for web traffic, and while instant messaging over the network is very useful, it can be relatively difficult to configure. In this guide, we'll look at two synchronous communications platforms (instant messengers) which can be routed ove ...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

The Play Store hasn't been the most secure place for apps lately. A quick Google search for "Play Store malware" will give you a taste of some of the malicious apps that snuck their way onto Android's official app store. Google is aware of the problem and they're tying to fix ...more

Due to the overnight success of smartphones, millions of people are connecting with others. Currently, over 15 million text messages are sent every minute worldwide. Most of this communication is happening in the open where any hacker can intercept and share in the discussion ...more

These days, that pocket-sized computer we call a smartphone is home to your entire digital life. But with the onset of mobile payments and online banking, the line between your virtual world and the physical realm is becoming increasingly blurred. We vigilantly remember to lo ...more

Think back to when you last wanted to transfer some music or videos to your friend's smartphone and how difficult and slow it was. As powerful as our phones are, the default file sharing options are limited. There are, fortunately, some better options which make moving files e ...more

There's a lot of misinformation about VPN services, and it stems from the fact that not all of them are created equal. Some focus on privacy, others on security, and a few VPNs are seemingly even purpose-built for the polar opposite: data collection. We made this guide to help ...more

With all of the personal data that's stored on our smartphones, it's of vital importance that we have some sort of lock screen security enabled. One of the Galaxy S5's killer features is obviously the fingerprint scanner. It makes the process of dealing with a secure lock scre ...more

Welcome back, my rookie hackers! The more we know about a system or network, the better our chances of owning it and not leaving a trace for investigators to follow. One of the often overlooked sources for information is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Many roo ...more

There are hidden Wi-Fi networks all around you — networks that will never show up in the list of available unlocked and password-protected hotspots that your phone or computer can see — but are they more secure than regular networks that broadcast their name to any nearby devi ...more

It's common for IoT devices like Wi-Fi security cameras to host a website for controlling or configuring the camera that uses HTTP instead of the more secure HTTPS. This means anyone with the network password can see traffic to and from the camera, allowing a hacker to interce ...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

The Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized computer that can crack Wi-Fi, clone key cards, break into laptops, and even clone an existing Wi-Fi network to trick users into connecting to the Pi instead. It can jam Wi-Fi for blocks, track cell phones, listen in on police scanners, ...more

Toyota is testing blockchain and distributed ledger technology (BC/DL) for data sharing for driverless cars and other applications. This could eventually reassure buyers of its upcoming high-end cars by making sure their sensitive data is secure. As vehicles modernize, they b ...more

Nauto, which develops driver-monitor cameras and algorithms for autonomous vehicles, is among a growing list of driverless startups able to attract tens of millions of dollars in funding after raising $159 million in its latest round of financing. Led by a subsidiary of SoftB ...more

There are nearly 100,000 unique onion service addresses online with over two million people using Tor every single day. Join me as I explore a small fraction of what the Tor network has to offer. It's puzzling to imagine about 100,000 .onion websites in existence. Readers who ...more

Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is one of the most popular chat protocols on the internet. The technology can be connected to the Tor network to create an anonymous and secure chatroom — without the use of public IP addresses. IRC servers allow one to create and manage rooms, us ...more

Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL flagships are some very powerful smartphones, but as with any high-tech gadget, they're only as capable as the user allows them to be. So if you're a proud new Pixel owner, it's time to bone up on a few new features to help get the most out of y ...more

Hello guys I am ROMEO 64 (sounds weird I guess but who cares. :D).. Alright....Ever wondered what happens when you login to your Facebook account? WARNING - geeky stuff ahead! Quit now if sleepy :D You cannot imagine how much of hidden stuff happens when you press your login ...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

Stay secure on public wireless networks by making your own FREE virtual private network (VPN). This tutorial shows you how to set up an OpenVPN server and connect to it from your laptop. Video: . Links used in this video: http://www.openvpn.net http://tinkernut.com/wiki/page/E ...more

Ever since the FBI took down the Silk Road and Dread Pirate Roberts last month, many questions have been raised about whether Tor still provides anonymity or not, and if it's now broken. I'll try to address that question here today succinctly from multiple angles, keeping it a ...more