While there aren't as many ways to customize your iPhone like there is on Android, there are still a lot of apps out there that can help streamline and enhance your experience beyond Apple's own default options — and we've hand-picked over 100 essentials. No matter if you've ...more
Whether you're white hat, black hat, or some shade in-between, navigating through a network is a core part of hacking. To do that, we need to be able to explore a network to discover the addresses of gateways, interfaces, and other attached devices. When ifconfig just isn't en ...more
An attacker with shell access to a Linux server can manipulate, or perhaps even ruin, anything they have access to. While many more subtle attacks could provide significant value to a hacker, most attacks also leave traces. These traces, of course, can also be manipulated and ...more
Apple has finally given us a decent file manager in iOS 11. The new "Files" app replaces the not-very-old iCloud Drive app that appeared in iOS 9, but you can still access your iCloud Drive files in the new Files app, as well as files from third-party cloud services. A nice im ...more
The Operative Framework is a powerful Python-based open-source intelligence (OSINT) tool that can be used to find domains registered by the same email address, as well as many other investigative functions. This reconnaissance tool provides insight about your target through ex ...more
All of Apple's products are praised for being extremely easy to use. So much so, that your grandma can pick one up and be a "pro" within a few hours. However, this isn't necessarily a good thing for us real power users who want more granular control of our devices. Luckily, M ...more
Spotlight, Apple's selection-based search system, received a major facelift on Mac OS X Yosemite. Packed with dozens of new features, such as a central search window and increased app suggestions, the reworked Spotlight was a breath of fresh air. While the Spotlight Search to ...more
Being organized is a big part of being productive. Keeping your important documents where they need to be is key to an optimized workflow. When using Google Keep, sometimes a note may outgrow its note status and you may want to upgrade it to a full on Google Doc. Thankfully, t ...more
Location-based gaming company Niantic knows its business model is inextricably tied to the outdoors, so it is in its best interest to help preserve that environment to give players a place to play. So, for the second straight year, Niantic will encourage Pokémon GO to assist ...more
Among iOS 11's many criticisms, one of the more surprising complaints came from parents worried that Apple wasn't doing enough to monitor and control their children's iPhone usage. Apple seems to have taken these issues to heart, as iOS 12 introduces new and improved parental ...more
When traveling or sightseeing, you may come across a landmark you can't quite identify and want to know what exactly it is and the history behind it. It could be a building, waterfall ... anything. If there are no signs around or they're in a different language, you'll have no ...more
Meta CEO and founder — and Next Reality 50 member —Meron Gribetz unveiled a new operating environment for augmented reality called Meta Workspace for the audience at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, today. Gribetz demonstrated several features of the ...more
If you're anything like me, clutter scattered across the bathroom counter, on the shower floor, or on any other available space is maddening. Who enjoys a mess of shampoos, scrubs, and sponges strewn around their feet or just out of reach in the shower? What can you do when sp ...more
One of the golden rules to cooking a Thanksgiving turkey is to place it on a roasting rack before it goes into the oven. Missing this step and cooking it directly on the pan will burn the bottom of the bird, resulting in overcooked, dry meat. Don't Miss: Unlock Your Oven's Se ...more
With limited storage options available on the Nexus 5, cloud storage can definitely come in handy. But sometimes, with the seemingly endless options of cloud services for us to choose from, our online data can get a bit disorganized. If you're like me, you've got about 5 or 6 ...more
Videos are great for catching fleeting moments, and photos are insanely easy to share with anyone, but how can you get the best of both worlds? Apple includes an easy way to take snapshots while you're in the middle of recording video, but that's just too much work for me. I' ...more
Firstly, I'd like to say that I have nothing against iPhoto; it's a great application that works wonderfully in Mac OS X. Unfortunately, when you no longer have iPhoto on your MacBook—and you don't want to pay for it—looking for an alternative is a necessary endeavor. I could ...more
When you want a helpful task manager on your iPhone or iPad, any of the nine apps in this guide should be at the top of your list. But we'll review each app's features to help you determine which one might be best for your workflow. Using a task manager on your iPhone or iPad ...more
The average iPhone user has between 60 to 90 applications installed. On one of my devices, I have over 600. With a ton of apps to sort through, it can sometimes be challenging to find the one you're looking for without having to use the Search tool (which is even better in iOS ...more
Amid the coronavirus chaos, two companies at the forefront of augmented reality technology took starkly different approaches to their upcoming developers conferences, as Facebook has canceled its annual F8 conference and Magic Leap plans to invite a limited number of attendees ...more
You may not have thought of dorks as powerful, but with the right dorks, you can hack devices just by Googling the password to log in. Because Google is fantastic at indexing everything connected to the internet, it's possible to find files that are exposed accidentally and co ...more
You're a busy, on-the-go professional, so you deserve an email client that keeps up with you. "Mail" on iPhone wasn't always the best option, but thanks to iOS 13, it feels like a completely different app. That said, there are plenty of alternatives that offer a different expe ...more
Apple's Reminders app has never been particularly sexy or appealing, but that changes in iOS 13. Although the productivity tool has always been useful for quick to-dos, it now has an overhauled user interface with several new features, including grouping lists together for imp ...more
It is said that the best way to avoid detection when hacking is to leave no trace, and often that means not touching the filesystem at all. But realistically, in most cases, it's impossible not to interact with the filesystem in one way or another. The next best thing to do to ...more
While modern browsers are robust and provide a lot of functionality, they can be unlocked to do some pretty spectacular things with browser extensions. For hackers and OSINT researchers, these tools can be used to defeat online tracking, log in to SSH devices, and search the i ...more
Last week, Twilio showed off how avatar-based chat communications will work on the Magic Leap One, and now a new startup has unveiled yet another way that augmented reality telepresence and remote collaboration can take place on the device. Emerging from stealth on Wednesday, ...more
For anyone using open source information to conduct an investigation, a balance between powerful tools and privacy controls are a must. Buscador is a virtual machine packed full of useful OSINT tools and streamlined for online research. This program can easily be set up in Vir ...more
Over the years, Nova Launcher has widened its audience. No longer is it simply a tool to return your home screen to a more stock look. With Nova, you gain customization tweaks and functionality unavailable with the stock launcher. One example of this is all of the cool stuff y ...more
In one of my previous articles, I discussed ShinoBot, a remote administration tool that makes itself obvious. The goal is to see if the user could detect a remote administration tool or RAT on their system. In this article, I'll be demonstrating the use of Pupy, an actual RAT, ...more
In 2013, Offensive Security released Kali Linux, a rebuild of BackTrack Linux derived from Debian. Since then, Kali has gone on to become somewhat of a standard for penetration testing. It comes preconfigured with a collection of tools accessible by a menu system, tied togethe ...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
With some of the groundwork out of the way in getting a Mac set up for hacking, it's time to start looking at toolboxes. Our first toolbox is Git, which will be used throughout future tutorials. Git is currently the most widely used version control system (VCS) in the world, ...more
Gmail has been the email standard for quite some time now, and for good reason: it's a free service provided by one of the largest tech companies in the world that offers users an amazing feature set to manage, send, and keep track of all their important emails. However, all ...more
Not many people use their phone exclusively for making calls or sending messages today. If you're an Android user, the chances are high that you're using your phone or tablet for work-related activities. However, the basic set of apps and services your device was shipped with ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Over the years, we have examined multiple ways to own, exploit, or compromise a system. On the other hand, we have not spent a lot of time on denial-of-service (DoS) attacks. For those of you who are new here, a denial of service is basica ...more
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! In the previous two posts in this series, we looked at the basics of buffer overflows. In this post, we will look at one technique for finding buffer overflows. We will try to send random, oversized, and invalid data at a variable to see wh ...more
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In many of my earlier tutorials, I mentioned the complementary nature of hacking and forensics. Both disciplines, hacking and forensics, benefit from a knowledge of the other. In many cases, both disciplines will use the same tool. In this t ...more
Everyone listens to music. I've got over 3,000 songs in my iTunes library, but am always looking for more, and I'm sure you are too. You can never have enough tunes to rock out to, right? If you're using Windows 8 like I currently am, these are some of the best apps in the Win ...more
If you use the Notes app on your iPhone and haven't updated to the newest software yet, you're missing out on some pretty valuable upgrades that improve smart folders, note security, collaboration, and more. So what are you waiting for? The new tools in Apple's Notes update m ...more
For enterprise augmented reality platform makers, remote assistance apps represent one of the greatest opportunities to show off the power of immersive computing. These apps enable experts to guide front-line workers or customers with AR prompts and other content in the field ...more
Router gateways are responsible for protecting every aspect of a network's configuration. With unfettered access to these privileged configurations, an attacker on a compromised Wi-Fi network can perform a wide variety of advanced attacks. Brute-Forcing Router Logins with Pat ...more
The photos and videos you take with your iPhone contain bits of information, known as metadata, including the location where they were taken. This metadata makes it easier for Photos to organize your media, but put these photos and videos in the wrong hands and anyone can find ...more
Open-source intelligence researchers and hackers alike love social media for reconnaissance. Websites like Twitter offer vast, searchable databases updated in real time by millions of users, but it can be incredibly time-consuming to sift through manually. Thankfully, tools li ...more
Typography is an important aspect of the video editing process. You deal with it when adding captions to news clips, giving on-screen recipes in food videos, creating burned-in subtitles for short films, making no-sound-needed videos for social media, and so much more. Enlight ...more
Wi-Fi tools keep getting more and more accessible to beginners, and the LAZY script is a framework of serious penetration tools that can be explored easily from within it. This powerful and simple tool can be used for everything from installing new add-ons to grabbing a WPA ha ...more
Hackers rely on good data to be able to pull off an attack, and reconnaissance is the stage of the hack in which they must learn as much as they can to devise a plan of action. Technical details are a critical component of this picture, and with OSINT tools like Maltego, a sin ...more
Analysis of photographs and social connections can be a huge component of social engineering. Understanding who a person is, as well as who they know, can establish links within a company. This information could be used by hackers to execute elaborate social engineering attack ...more
Kali Linux is the obvious first choice of an operating system for most new hackers, coming bundled with a curated collection of tools organized into easy-to-navigate menus and a live boot option that is very newbie-friendly. But Kali isn't the only distribution targeted at pen ...more
Adobe Premiere Clip gives mobile video editors the tools they need to make some great looking projects from their iPhone or Android device. Editors need ways to organize and trim clips, edit the look of those clips, add music, and more. For a smartphone app, Adobe Premiere Cli ...more
In five short years, three generations of ultra-low-cost Raspberry Pi devices have challenged the boundaries of what a person can do with a $35 computer — especially with Kali Linux. With each Pi more powerful and cheaper than the last, the addition of the Pi Zero in 2015 too ...more
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Hacking has a long and storied history in the U.S. and around the world. It did not begin yesterday, or even at the advent of the 21st century, but rather dates back at least 40 years. Of course, once the internet migrated to commercial use ...more
Whether scheduling meetings, events, tasks, or even keeping tabs on the weather, a good digital calendar can help you stay on top of your game in ways that a normal calendar could never do. Indeed, there are many calendars to choose from, but Google Calendar is one of the best ...more
Apple's newest mobile operating system, iOS 8, is out for the general public, and we've got a rundown on the best new features you can use on your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. While there's not a huge visual change as there was from iOS 6 to iOS 7, there's still plenty of coo ...more
There comes a time in relationships when two people decide to move in together, and when this happens, you learn two things: Your perfect, wonderful, adorable significant other is a disgusting, messy pig. Your significant other thinks the same about you. So how do you make s ...more
We've all heard our fair share of roommate horror stories, or have some of our own, because we never truly know who someone is until we've lived with them. Cohabitation issues generally revolve around things like bills, chores, cleaning, and groceries. Approaching a roommate, ...more
If you haven't noticed yet, there are a lot of new features hiding in your iPhone's Messages app, and some of them are things users have been requesting for a long time. While iMessage is getting a lot of attention by letting us edit and unsend messages, it's only just the sta ...more
Apple's new iOS 16 software update is finally here, and there are over 350 new features and changes for you to enjoy on your iPhone. There are major lock screen and home screen improvements, a pleasant surprise for the Contacts app, and tons of new upgrades to Safari, Mail, Me ...more
We're living in the age of Big Data. As the primary force behind everything from targeted marketing campaigns and online search algorithms to self-driving cars and even space exploration, massive sets of complex data stand at the heart of today's most exciting and important in ...more
If you live in the US, it's your civic duty to understand our governing bodies and the political system that puts them in place. It doesn't matter what your age is, knowing who to vote for is as important as voting at all. That starts with policing your own representatives to ...more
While iOS 13 might have made waves for some of its more prominent features — most notably system-wide Dark Mode — some of the more interesting tools lie with its smaller, unannounced updates. One of those updates is a new Reminders setting to tag contacts in a to-do task so th ...more