Hot Null Byte How-Tos

How To: Learn How to Play the Market with This Data-Driven Trading Bundle

If you're reading this, you're likely a tech-savvy coding pro whose analytical talents are mostly applied to designing apps, cracking passwords, and infiltrating networks — all of which are admirable activities for both aspiring and seasoned white hat hackers. But there are other profitable ways that you can put these types of skills to use, namely in the world of investment and trading.

How To: Expand Your Analytical & Payload-Building Skill Set with This In-Depth Excel Training

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, such as cracking password-protected spreadsheets, but there's so much more to know from an attack standpoint.

How To: Learn to Code Your Own Games with This Hands-on Bundle

We've shared a capture-the-flag game for grabbing handshakes and cracking passwords for Wi-Fi, and there are some upcoming CTF games we plan on sharing for other Wi-Fi hacks and even a dead-drop game. While security-minded activities and war games are excellent ways to improve your hacking skills, coding a real video game is also an excellent exercise for improving your programming abilities.

How To: Here's Why You Need to Add Python to Your Hacking & Programming Arsenal

Choosing which programming language to learn next can be a truly daunting task. That's the case regardless of whether you're a Null Byter just beginning a career in development and cybersecurity or you're a seasoned ethical hacking and penetration tester with years of extensive coding experience under your belt. On that note, we recommend Python for anyone who hasn't mastered it yet.

How To: Spy on SSH Sessions with SSHPry2.0

SSH, or the secure shell, is a way of controlling a computer remotely from a command-line interface. While the information exchanged in the SSH session is encrypted, it's easy to spy on an SSH session if you have access to the computer that's being logged in to. Using a tool called SSHPry, we can spy on and inject commands into the SSH sessions of any other user logged in to on the same machine.

How to Hack with Arduino: Building MacOS Payloads for Inserting a Wi-Fi Backdoor

Arduino is a language that's easy to learn and supported on many incredibly low-cost devices, two of which are the $2 Digispark and a $3 ESP8266-based board. We can program these devices in Arduino to hijack the Wi-Fi data connection of any unlocked macOS computer in seconds, and we can even have it send data from the target device to our low-cost evil access point.

How To: Identify Missing Windows Patches for Easier Exploitation

No operating system is stricken with as many vulnerabilities as Windows, and it's often a race to release the latest patches to fix things. From an attacker's point of view, knowing which patches are present on a Windows machine can make or break successful exploitation. Today, we will be covering three methods of patch enumeration, using Metasploit, WMIC, and Windows Exploit Suggester.

How To: Securely Sniff Wi-Fi Packets with Sniffglue

Sniffing packets over a network is an easy way for hackers to gather information on a target without needing to do much work. But doing so can be risky if sniffing packets on an untrusted network because a payload within the packets being captured could be executed on your system. To prevent that, Sniffglue sandboxes packet sniffing to provide an extra layer of security.

How To: Spot Fake Businesses & Find the Signature of CEOs with OSINT

Businesses leave paper trails for nearly every activity they do, making it easy for a hacker or researcher to dig up everything from business licenses to a CEO's signature if they know where to look. To do this, we'll dig into the databases of government organizations and private companies to learn everything we can about businesses and the people behind them.

How To: Share Wi-Fi Adapters Across a Network with Airserv-Ng

If you want to carry a variety of network adapters without looking suspicious, a perfect solution is accessing them through Airserv-ng. Tucked away in the Aircrack-ng suite, this tool allows a hacker to plug any number of network adapters into a Raspberry Pi and access them over a Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection.

How To: Hack Together a YouTube Playing Botnet Using Chromecasts

Imagine being able to play a video instantly on hundreds of thousands of devices across the globe. It's totally possible, as long as all of those devices have a Chromecast plugged in. When Chromecasts are left exposed to the internet, hackers can use add them to a botnet that can play YouTube videos at will. The "attack" is made even easier thanks to a simple Python program called CrashCast.

How To: A Hacker's Guide to Programming Microcontrollers

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. In this guide, we'll build an Arduino program from scratch and explain the code structure in a way anyone can understand.

How To: Control Anything with a Wi-Fi Relay Switch Using aRest

A relay is an electrical component that works like a light switch, where it's turned on or off with an electrical signal. By connecting a relay to a Wi-Fi connected microcontroller like an ESP8266, you can build a connected switch that can be controlled from the web browser of any device connected to the same Wi-Fi network — all for just a couple of dollars.

Analyzing the Hacks: The Girl in the Spider's Web Explained

The latest film addition in the American-produced Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider's Web, was just released on Blu-ray a few days ago. As you could expect, the movie has many hacking scenes throughout, just like the previous English and Swedish language movies centered around hacker Lisbeth Salander. Of course, with the quick pace of some scenes, the hacks can be hard to follow.