Hot Null Byte How-Tos
How To: Use a Directional Antenna with ESP8266-Based Microcontroller
Microcontrollers like ESP8266-based boards have built-in Wi-Fi, and that's really cool, but what's even cooler is that certain pro models of the D1 Mini also have a port where you can connect a directional antenna. This can give you exceptional range, but if you were to just plug one in after opening the package, it most likely wouldn't work.
How To: Null Byte's Hacker Guide to Buying an ESP32 Camera Module That's Right for Your Project
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 support.
How To: Stay Fully in Sync with Your Remote Team Using TimeSync Pro
If you've been working from home a bit more often than usual lately, you're far from alone. Despite some optimistic predictions that things would have returned to normal right now, social distancing guidelines have forced most offices to shut their doors, and it's looking like this is going to be the new normal for the foreseeable future.
How To: Learn to Code with a Bundle That Fits Your Schedule
It can feel hard to find time for just about anything these days. But if you really sit down and think about it, you likely have a little more free time in your day than you might actually imagine. The average person has about 4.5 hours of total leisure time over the course of a week.
How To: Get Started with Python with This One-Hour Course for Just $14.99
If you have information technology or computer science aspirations — even white hat hacking — then Python is a programming language you absolutely have to be familiar with. According to a recent survey of industry experts, Python is the fastest-growing language in the developer field. It's also one of the most sought-after skill sets among employers and is responsible for some of the best hacking tools.
How To: 13 Black Friday Deals on Courses That Will Beef Up Your Hacking & Programming Skill Set
It's Black Friday time, and in 2020, that means a lot of online deals to make up for more stores closing on Thanksgiving, as well as everyone avoiding in-person shopping because of the coronavirus. But while you may wish to grab a better 65-inch 4K TV, the new PlayStation 5, or some hacker hardware on sale, Black Friday is also the best time to invest in your programming and cybersecurity education.
How To: Use Banner Grabbing to Aid in Reconnaissance & See What Services Are Running on the System
As we've seen with other tools and utilities, administrators typically use certain things to do their job more efficiently, and those things are often abused by attackers for exploitation. After all, hacking is just the process of getting a computer to do things in unexpected ways. Today, we will be covering various methods to perform banner grabbing to learn more about the target system.
How To: Become an In-Demand Ethical Hacker with This $15 CompTIA Course
If you're interested in joining the increasingly popular and lucrative world of ethical or "white hat" hacking, you're far from alone. More and more coding and programming pros are turning to this field thanks to the high pay, countless opportunities, and exciting work environment.
How To: Use Linux Smart Enumeration to Discover Paths to Privesc
Privilege escalation is the technique used to exploit certain flaws to obtain elevated permissions relative to the current user. There are a vast number of methods out there to go from user to root on Linux, and keeping track of them all can be difficult. This is where automation comes into play, and a privilege escalation script called Linux Smart Enumeration is one to take advantage of.
Hacking macOS: How to Identify Antivirus & Firewall Software Installed on Someone's MacBook
Identifying security software installed on a MacBook or other Apple computer is important to hackers and penetration testers needing to compromise a device on the network. With man-in-the-middle attacks, packets leaving the Mac will tell us a lot about what kind of antivirus and firewall software is installed.
How To: Program an ESP8266 or ESP32 Microcontroller Over Wi-Fi with MicroPython
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 it, upload files, or grab data.
How To: Become an In-Demand Web Developer with This $29 Training
Knowing just one or two programming languages is no longer sufficient if you want to make serious money in the lucrative world of web design and development. But the good news is that you don't need to spend an excessive amount of time or money on a traditional coding education to get the skills you need to thrive.
How To: Python 2 vs. Python 3 — Important Differences Every Hacker Should Know
Python is commonly touted as one of the best programming languages for beginners to learn, and its straightforward syntax and functionality makes that hard to argue with. But a lot of tutorials still use Python 2, which is outdated now. Python 3 introduces many new features, and it's important to be aware of them going forward, as well as the key differences between Python 3 and its predecessor.
How To: Create Rogue APs with MicroPython on an ESP8266 Microcontroller
For a hacker, there are a lot of advantages to creating a fake network. One advantage forces nearby devices to use their real MAC address if you happen upon a network that's stored in their preferred network list.
How To: Abuse Vulnerable Sudo Versions to Get Root
Anyone who has used Linux long enough is familiar with sudo. Short for superuser do (or substitute user do, depending on who you ask), it allows users to run commands as either root or another user on the system. From a hacker's point of view, sudo is often all that stands between them and root access. We'll be exploring an older vulnerability in sudo that allows a user to run commands as root.
How to Hack with Arduino: Tracking Which Networks a Mac Has Connected To & When
A macOS computer can reveal a lot of information about the owner, including which Wi-Fi network they have permission to access. With an Arduino-based attack, we'll use a five-dollar setup to inject a rogue Wi-Fi network and steal the list of trusted Wi-Fi networks, allowing us to see where the computer has been.
Hacking Windows 10: How to Use SSH Tunnels to Forward Requests & Hack Remote Routers
Without admin privileges, installing additional software, or modifying the Windows 10 firewall, an attacker can alter a router and perform a variety of exploits. It's accomplished by forwarding requests from Kali through a backdoored Windows computer to the router gateway with simple SSH tunnels.
How To: Use Wordlister to Create Custom Password Combinations for Cracking
Password cracking is a specialty of some hackers, and it's often thought that raw computing power trumps everything else. That is true in some cases, but sometimes it's more about the wordlist. Making a custom, targeted wordlist can cut down cracking time considerably, and Wordlister can help with that.
How To: Program MicroPython NeoPixel Holiday Lights to Animate However You Want
Individually addressable LEDs, also commonly called "NeoPixels" after the popular Adafruit product, are a bright and colorful way to get started with basic Python programming. With an inexpensive ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontroller, it's easy to get started programming your own holiday lighting animations on a string of NeoPixels with beginner-friendly MicroPython!
How To: Use Google Search Operators to Find Elusive Information
Google is an incredibly useful database of indexed websites, but querying Google doesn't search for what you type literally. The algorithms behind Google's searches can lead to a lot of irrelevant results. Still, with the right operators, we can be more exact while searching for information that's time-sensitive or difficult to find.
How To: Conduct Recon on a Web Target with Python Tools
Reconnaissance is one of the most important and often the most time consuming, part of planning an attack against a target.
How To: Beat LFI Restrictions with Advanced Techniques
One of the most common web application vulnerabilities is LFI, which allows unauthorized access to sensitive files on the server. Such a common weakness is often safeguarded against, and low-hanging fruit can be defended quite easily. But there are always creative ways to get around these defenses, and we'll be looking at two methods to beat the system and successfully pull off LFI.
How To: Use LinEnum to Identify Potential Privilege Escalation Vectors
The art of privilege escalation is a skill that any competent hacker should possess. It's an entire field unto itself, and while it's good to know how to perform the techniques involved manually, it's often more efficient to have a script automate the process. LinEnum is one such script that can be incredibly useful for privilege escalation on Linux systems.
How To: The 15 Most Popular Talks from DEFCON's Hacking Conferences
Every summer for the last 26 years, hoards of hackers have descended on the Las Vegas Strip for DEFCON, the biggest hacker conference in the US. There's a wealth of talks every season (DEFCON 27 has at least 95 scheduled), and there have been some essential topics to learn from in past discussions. We've dug through the last ten years and found the 15 most popular talks you should watch.
Raspberry Pi Alternatives: 10 Single-Board Computers Worthy of Hacking Projects Big & Small
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 capabilities, there are other options available.
Hacking macOS: How to Use Images to Smuggle Data Through Firewalls
Data can be injected into images quickly without the use of metadata tools. Attackers may use this knowledge to exfiltrate sensitive information from a MacBook by sending the pictures to ordinary file-sharing websites.
How To: Discover & Attack Raspberry Pis Using Default Credentials with Rpi-hunter
When setting up a Raspberry Pi, it's easy to overlook changing the default password. Like many IoT devices, the Raspberry Pi's default Raspbian operating system installs with a widely-known default password, leaving the device vulnerable to remote access. Using a tool called rpi-hunter, hackers can discover, access, and drop custom payloads on any weak Pi connected to the same network.
How To: Probe Websites for Vulnerabilities More Easily with the TIDoS Framework
Websites and web applications power the internet as we know it, representing a juicy target for any hacker or red team. TIDoS is a framework of modules brought together for their usefulness in hacking web apps, organized into a common sense workflow. With an impressive array of active and passive OSINT modules, TIDoS has the right instrument for any web app audit.
How To: Understand & Use IPv4 to Navigate a Network
You may not know it, but the IPv4 address of your computer contains tons of useful information about whatever Wi-Fi network you're on. By knowing what your IPv4 address and subnet mask are telling you, you can easily scan the whole network range, locate the router, and discover other devices on the same network.
How To: Detect Vulnerabilities in a Web Application with Uniscan
With the number of web applications out there today, it comes as no surprise that there are just as many vulnerabilities waiting for hackers to discover. Finding those vulnerabilities can be a difficult task, but there are plenty of tools available to make the process easier. While it won't help find any zero-days, web scanners such as Uniscan will detect common vulnerabilities.
How To: Hack Distributed Ruby with Metasploit & Perform Remote Code Execution
Things that are supposed to make life easier for developers and users are often easy targets for exploitation by hackers. Like many situations in the tech world, there is usually a trade-off between convenience and security. One such trade-off is found in a system known as Distributed Ruby, which can be compromised easily with Metasploit.
How To: Use Metasploit's Database to Stay Organized & Store Information While Hacking
The ability to stay organized and be resourceful with data gathered from recon is one of the things that separates the true hackers from the script kiddies. Metasploit contains a built-in database that allows for efficient storage of information and the ability to utilize that information to better understand the target, which ultimately leads to more successful exploitation.
How To: Generate a Clickjacking Attack with Burp Suite to Steal User Clicks
Users are often the weakest link when probing for vulnerabilities, and it's no surprise they can be easily fooled. One way to do this is called clickjacking. This type of attack tricks the victim into clicking something they didn't mean to click, something under the attacker's control. Burp Suite contains a useful tool called Clickbandit to generate a clickjacking attack automatically.
Hacking macOS: How to Create an Undetectable Payload
Encrypting payloads and encoding stagers are more effective against macOS than one might think. It's very easy to evade VirusTotal and macOS antivirus software using a few simple tricks.
How To: Exploit Remote File Inclusion to Get a Shell
A simple security flaw can allow an attacker to gain a strong foothold with little effort on their part. When a web application permits remotely hosted files to be loaded without any validation, a whole can of worms is opened up, with consequences ranging from simple website defacement to full-on code execution. For this reason, RFI can be a promising path to obtaining a shell.
How To: Discover Open Ports Using Metasploit's Built-in Port Scanner
One of the first steps in reconnaissance is determining the open ports on a system. Nmap is widely considered the undisputed king of port scanning, but certain situations call for different tools. Metasploit makes it easy to conduct port scanning from directly inside the framework, and we'll show you three types of port scans: TCP, SYN, and XMAS.
Hacking macOS: How to Hack a MacBook with One Ruby Command
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.
How To: Abuse Session Management with OWASP ZAP
It's always a good idea to know how an attack works at the very basic level. Manual techniques for exploitation often find holes that even the most sophisticated tool cannot. Sometimes, though, using one of these tools can make things so much easier, especially if one has a solid foundation of how it works. One such tool can help us perform a cross-site request forgery with minimal difficulty.
Hacking macOS: How to Sniff Passwords on a Mac in Real Time, Part 2 (Packet Analysis)
Most users don't realize how much valuable data is in their network traffic. With a few simple tools, an attacker can quickly pick out cookies, passwords, and DNS queries from a macOS device as it covertly streams the victim's network traffic to the attacker's system. Here, we will cover two methods for analyzing packets flowing from a Mac.
How To: Use Beginner Python to Build a Brute-Force Tool for SHA-1 Hashes
Developers creating login systems know better than to store passwords in plain text, usually storing hashes of a password to prevent storing the credentials in a way a hacker could steal. Due to the way hashes work, not all are created equal. Some are more vulnerable than others, and a little Python could be used to brute-force any weak hashes to get the passwords they were created from.