Hot Null Byte How-Tos
UDP Flooding: How to Kick a Local User Off the Network
Only so much data can be passed through the network and to your computer's networking interfaces. This is limited by the amount of bandwidth you have. The more bandwidth you have, the faster your network connections will be. Not only this, but your transfers will be more parallel and distributed so that all of your speed isn't taken up by one transfer. When all of your bandwidth is sapped and unable to be used, this is called a denial of service, or a DOS.
How To: Run a Free Web Server From Home on Windows or Linux with Apache
Paying for web hosting isn't ideal in most situations. If you have your own website, hosting it yourself is very acceptable and easy to do, assuming your internet bandwidth permits. Most people want to run a personal site, nothing crazy, so hosting from home on low-bandwidth internet is actually a better solution in most cases.
How To: Turn Your House Lights On & Off Using the Internet
Haven't you ever wanted to live in a futuristic home? I think that homes are headed towards an era where they will be controlled by our computers and smartphones. No longer will you have to find your keys to unlock your door, or wait until you get home to monitor your security, because X10 is here.
How To: Get Free Netflix for Life
Null Byte is looking for moderators! In today's Null Byte, we're hacking Netflix. As most of you know, Netflix is a subscription service that streams movies and TV shows to your devices over the internet. A common stance amongst my Xbox Live friends is that Netflix isn't worth the cost. The instant movies predominantly consist of old titles, and new movies aren't added often enough.
How To: Hack a Radio to Pick Up Different Frequencies - Including Law Enforcement & More
Hardware hacks are something I feel we don't get enough of at Null Byte, so today I figured I would introduce a fun one. I've always been a curious hardware hacker. Taking things apart and learning how their internals work has always been a part of my nature. Quite some years ago, my father showed me a really cool trick on how to hack normal radios to scan frequencies that are normally non-listenable. This little hack allowed us to scan frequencies belonging to law enforcement, and even frequ...
How To: Social Engineer Your Debt Collectors Into Giving You More Time to Pay Bills
Having bills to pay is one of the worst parts of life, especially around the holidays. And if you're extremely unlucky, you might also have to pay some hefty medical bills. This can put a heavy damper on plans, wants and needs. What's worse? The people that you owe money to are pushy and always bother you to pay in a more timely fashion, or worse, pay bigger premiums.
How To: Your Guide to Buying Computer Parts: How to Get the Most for Your Money
When you buy computer parts, it can be a tough decision where you want to put all of your hard earned dollars into. Not only that, but when you buy a top of the line component, 3 months later (at most), your hardware will likely be outdated. This puts consumers like us in a bit of a pickle when it comes to purchasing, especially on a tight budget.
How To: How Credit Card Algorithms Work: The Anatomy of Credit Card Numbers
Have you ever wondered how credit card numbers work? I mean, how they really work? How do they come up with the numbers? Credit cards actually follow a very specific pattern. Let's take a look at how they're set up.
How To: Downgrade and Jailbreak Your iOS Devices Stock Firmware for the Holidays
Lots of people are going to be getting the latest iOS devices this holiday season. But what good is a portable device if you don't hack it? Jailbreaking on the latest stock iOS, version 4.3.5, is a bit of a trivial endeavor. Not many people know how to downgrade from this firmware to a firmware that can be jailbroken (pre-iOS 5). If you want the added functionality and the complete control over your device that comes with jailbreaking, then read on.
How To: Get Unlimited Money in Skyrim by Hacking Your Game Saves
Skyrim is a time consuming game. I know I'm not alone in saying I constantly find myself looking for more time in the day. There is never enough time to read the books I want to read, or learn what I want to learn, or play the games that I want to play.
How To: Defend from Keyloggers in Firefox with Keystroke Encryption
Null Byte is looking for moderators. More threats to computers exist every day. Not only do we have computer viruses and malware, but we have rootkits and other nasty pieces of code that can log your keyboard strokes or even add your computer to a botnet to attack other websites. Your computer can be infected even if you have anti-virus software installed. I can't stress enough how easy it is for a hacker to write a piece of code that gets around every piece of anti-virus software.
How To: Hack Your Xbox Gamerscore
Nearly everyone has the capacity to be a cheater. Sometime or another, all Xbox users have yearned to get their gamerscore to unimaginable thresholds—for bragging and egotistical purposes. I can relate to this desire. However, I also don't want to mod my gamerscore, because it's just unfair and not nearly as much fun as doing it the honest way. To me, it's synonymous to entering the cheats into a game after you've beaten it. Cheats can add new life into a game once you're done, but since the ...
How To: Windows 7 Won't Boot? Here's How To Fix Your Master Boot Record
With a lot of Null Byters playing around with Linux because of its excessive use in the hacking world, some of you are bound to run into some trouble with the installation at some point or another. If you make a mistake, or you're intimidated by the wonky-looking installation screen, you may want to just stick with Windows. However, you may notice it can be hard to go back once you've crossed a certain point in the installation. Your Windows installation may be broken or unbootable.
How To: The Novice Guide to Teaching Yourself How to Program (Learning Resources Included)
Today's post is a small go-to guide for beginner programmers in Null Byte. With many of our community members picking up programming from our Community Bytes, it only makes sense to lay out a one-stop guide for your reference. Hopefully this guide will help you make an educated and thoughtful choice on what programming languages you want to learn, and how you want to learn said languages.
How To: Fix the Unreadable USB Glitch in VirtualBox
Many users of the virtualization software VirtualBox may have noticed that the USB system has been pretty buggy for quite a long time. I've had my USB randomly duck out on me way too many times to count. This can really be difficult to deal with when you require access to the devices and files from the host system.
How To: Install Linux to a Thumb Drive
Let's face it, CDs and DVDs are a thing of the past. We no longer use them as a storage medium because they are slow, prone to failure in burning, and non-reusable. The future is flash memory. Flash memory is cheap, fast, and efficient. Eventually, flash drives might even replace discs as the preferred prerecorded selling format for movies.
How To: Make Skyrim (& Other Games) Utilize AMD Crossfire Before the Patch is Released
Users of the latest AMD 6xxx series graphics cards may have noticed that when they are playing Skyrim, their framerate isn't anywhere near what it is supposed to be with dual GPUs in Crossfire. AMD is working on releasing drivers with these issues fixed, but it has been too long since Skyrim has come out to just sit and wait.
How To: Safely Overclock Your GPU, CPU & RAM for Better Speed & Performance
Overclocking is quite an awesome thing. When computer components are designed, they are made to run at a certain speed, otherwise known as their clock and bus speeds. These limits are not actually limits. You can overclock components, which essentially makes them go faster than their set limitations. This can save you a lot of cash when newer components come out and you don't have enough money to upgrade. However, when you overclock components, you must be careful and make sure that the machi...
How To: Proof of Social Engineering Success!
Just showing off the successful social engineering results. Make sure that if you used the guide, post back here with a picture of whatever you bought!
How To: Shorten URLs from the Command Line with Python
Shortening URLs has become a necessity in this age of Twitter and limited-character status updates. It not only allows us to cram more words into our oh-so-important Twitter statuses, but it also helps us with a few other things.
How To: Social Engineer Your Way Into an Amusement Park for Free
When it comes to social engineering, Null Byte is here to show you how it's done. Social engineering is the key fundamental to unlocking tons of possibilities and opportunities in your everyday life. So, what is social engineering? Social engineering can be called many things. It's taking nothing and turning it into something. It's taking the bad and making it good. Above everything else, it's the art of manipulating the world and people around you—coercing that salesman into giving you a low...
How To: Create a Free SSH Account on Shellmix to Use as a Webhost & 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 forms of analysis—simultaneously. We have gone over how to make a home SSH tunnel. However, the question has come up, "How can I get an SSH tunnel to somewhere other than my computer?" This would be useful in a situation w...
How To: Backup All of Your Xbox 360 Data to Your Computer
Flash memory can be a tad unpredictable at times. I have had 4 flash drives die out on me over the last few years, and they usually die without warning. When a flash memory based device dies, the data is likely impossible to recover. Adversely on an HDD, or Hard Drive Disk, even if the disk dies out, someone will probably be able to fix it and get it back to working order—at least long enough for you to back up your data. Hard drives are a bit more forgiving. As you can guess, due to the unpr...
How To: Code Your Own Twitter Client in Python Using OAuth
This is my attempt to show people some cool things we can do with programming, and to give a small incentive for people to join the weekly Community Bytes. I wanted to make a tutorial on how to use Twitter from the command line with Python. This would have been an easy project to do not too far back, and a good bit of practice for a beginner to programming. It teaches that you can do useful stuff with programming. However, a while ago Twitter started using something called OAuth to access the...
How To: Encrypt your Skype Messages to Thwart Snooping Eyes Using Pidgin
Skype is a great service. It allows a free solution for VoIP to VoIP calls, and cheap VoIP to landline calling. However, a very disturbing, little known fact that might push you away from Skype does exist. If you closely read the terms of service agreement, it clearly says that Skype is allowed to decrypt your messages whenever they please. Here at Null Byte, we tend to enjoy our anonymity, don't we?
Remove Your Online Identity: The Ultimate Guide to Anonymity and Security on the Internet
Anonymity is something that doesn't exist today. Everything you do in the world is tracked, from the purchases you make to surfing the internet—even taking pictures on your iPhone. Everything you have ever said and done on the internet is still there—somewhere. This is called caching. For example, when a site is down, you can view its cached page on Google.
Coding Basics: A Guide to Choosing Your Optimal Text Editor or IDE
When you first become interested in learning how to program, it can be difficult to find a place to start. A lot of questions come up, especially if you're new to the idea of programming entirely. After you pick which language you want to learn, you have to worry about how you're going to write the language.
How To: Run an FTP Server from Home with Linux
File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, is a network protocol made for transferring files in a client and host fashion over a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network, such as the internet. FTP is integrated into most browsers, and you have probably used it before. It is a common way to host files and transfer them easily. To access an FTP, a login is required, unless the server is configured to use anonymous logins (like the Arch Linux mirrors).
How To: Recover a Windows Password with Ophcrack
When Windows stores a password, it is done so by hashing the password in an LM hash and putting it in the Windows SAM file. In the scary moment that you lose your password, but don't want to pay some geek to have full root access to your computer, you need to recover it using Ophcrack. Ophcrack doesn't remove the password, or bypass it, it cracks the password hash using rainbow tables.
How To: Remove a Windows Password with a Linux Live CD
Back when I was a Windows user, I know I'm not the only one who has experienced password loss—that moment where you just can't remember your password. Sometimes it happens to the best of us. So, how can we get into the system without paying a local geek or geeksquad to do it? First, we have to look into how Windows stores their passwords.
How To: Install "Incompatible" Firefox Add-Ons After Upgrading to the New Firefox
To the displeasure of many loyal Firefox users, Mozilla has been deploying what seems like a new marketing strategy to "catch up" to Google Chrome. I have no idea if this is because the version number is higher than theirs, but it is downright annoying. It's not all complaints, though. Firefox has done an amazing job at completely revamping its source code and redesigning all of its engines, making it a more than worthy competitor to Chrome. However, we are displeased with Firefox because eve...
How To: Run a Virtual Computer Within Your Host OS with VirtualBox
With the computer's rapid increases in power and efficiency, computer virtualization has taken the scene by storm. With virtualization software, and powerful enough computer hardware, your computer can run a virtual computer within itself. This effectively gives you multiple OS's on the host OS. This can be used for a lot of cool stuff that your computer would normally be limited by. Let's take a look at a few.
How To: Chain VPNs for Complete Anonymity
Big name individual hackers and hacker groups everywhere in the news are getting caught and thrown in jail. Everytime I see something like this happen, I won't lie, I get a little sad. Then I wonder, how are these guys getting caught? If a group like LulzSec, with all the fame and "1337-ness" can get caught, I think my hacker comrades are doing something wrong.
How To: Quickly Encrypt Your Web Browsing Traffic When Connected to Public WiFi
As we all know, security is a big thing here in Null Byte. We've talked quite a bit about ways to encrypt traffic and become anonymous on the internet, some of which entail using proxies, VPNs, and SSH tunnels. We've also talked about preference using SSL pages in practice for safe logins. These are all great protocols and tools, but aren't without their flaws and inconveniences.
How To: Securely & Anonymously Spend Money Online
Anonymity is very important to many internet users. By having your "e-identity" exposed online, you can be stuck with a number of unwanted issues, such as:
How To: Burn an XDG3 Formatted Xbox 360 Game ISO with Linux
Gamers who have their Xbox 360's firmware flashed may have recently noticed an inability to play backups, or even make backups of newer games that have come out, such as Gears of War 3 and Dead Island, to name a few.
How To: Hack Your Firefox User Agent to Spoof Your OS and Browser
There are a lot of things on your computer that can reveal information about you when you are surfing the Internet. If you are like me, then you will do anything to maintain your privacy and prevent those little leaks of information from happening. Here's a list of a few of the "threats" that can reveal information about you:
How To: Reveal Saved Browser Passwords with JavaScript Injections
JavaScript is the language of the internet. It is what allows us to create dynamic, interesting webpages that are fast, web-based applications and so much more. The primary use of JavaScript is to write functions that are embedded in or included from HTML pages and that interact with the Document Object Model (DOM) of the page. This is the magic that allows all of what we see to happen, and for our browser to be manipulated.
How To: Recover Deleted Files in Linux
File recovery on Linux is a bit different than Windows. It requires different software than the Windows counterparts because every OS has their own file system. Windows uses NTFS, or FAT file systems, while on the other hand, Linux uses ext-based file systems. I personally use ext4 file system because it's the latest and greatest ext-journaling system and supports a large level of directory recursion and file sizes, but most installations still use ext2 or ext3. When files are deleted from a ...
How To: Recover Deleted Files in Windows
Everyone has deleted a file or folder on accident before. Sometimes people even delete stuff on purpose, only to find out that they needed the files after all. If you're experiencing one of these mishaps, don't worry, file recovery is possible in most cases!