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How To: Easily Generate Hundreds of Phishing Domains

A convincing domain name is critical to the success of any phishing attack. With a single Python script, it's possible to find hundreds of available phishing domains and even identify phishing websites deployed by other hackers for purposes such as stealing user credentials.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Remotely Record & Listen to the Microphone of a Hacked Computer

The microphone in a Windows computer is accessible to most applications running on the device at all times and completely without security limitations. Information gathered from recorded audio conversations taking place in the surrounding area of a compromised computer can be used for social engineering, blackmail, or any number of other reasons.

How To: Attack Web Applications with Burp Suite & SQL Injection

Web applications are becoming more and more popular, replacing traditional desktop programs at an accelerated rate. With all these new apps out on the web comes a variety of security implications associated with being connected to the internet where anyone can poke and prod at them. One of the simplest, yet most prevalent types of security flaws found in modern web apps is SQL injection.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Capture Keystrokes & Passwords Remotely

Using a keylogger to intercept keys pressed on an infected computer can circumvent encryption used by email and secure chat clients. The collected data can often reveal usernames, passwords, and potentially compromising and private information which hackers abuse for financial gain.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Find Sensitive & 'Deleted' Files Remotely

Deleted bank statements and private photos are still within an attacker's grasp, so don't think that emptying your recycling bin is enough to keep your files from coming back to life. It's possible for a hacker to recover compromising files and images from a backdoored computer completely without the victim's knowledge.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Capture & Exfiltrate Screenshots Remotely

Screenshots taken from a compromised computer can provide hackers with access to private emails, photographs, and information found in sensitive documents. This data can be used by the attackers to build profiles of a target for social engineering attacks and blackmail or even just to release the information out in the wild.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Steal & Decrypt Passwords Stored in Chrome & Firefox Remotely

Passwords stored in web browsers like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are a gold mine for hackers. An attacker with backdoor access to a compromised computer can easily dump and decrypt data stored in web browsers. So, you'll want to think twice before hitting "Save" next time you enter a new password.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Break into Somebody's Computer Without a Password (Setting Up the Payload)

A powered-off Windows 10 laptop can be compromised in less than three minutes. With just a few keystrokes, it's possible for a hacker to remove all antivirus software, create a backdoor, and capture webcam images and passwords, among other highly sensitive personal data.

Advanced Exploitation: How to Find & Write a Buffer Overflow Exploit for a Network Service

While our time with the Protostar VM from Exploit Exercises was lovely, we must move on to bigger things and harder challenges. Exploit Exercises' Fusion VM offers some more challenging binary exploitation levels for us to tackle. The biggest change is that these levels are all network services, which means we'll write our first remote exploits.

How To: Create Your Own Search Engine for More Privacy & Zero Trust Issues

While there are a variety of privacy-focused search engines available like StartPage and DuckDuckGo, nothing can offer the complete trust offered by creating one's own search engine. For complete trust and security, Searx can be used as free metasearch engine which can be hosted locally and index results from over 70 different search engines.

How To: Run Kali Linux as a Windows Subsystem

Kali Linux is known as being the de facto penetration-testing Linux distribution but can be a pain to use as an everyday OS — even more of a pain if that means carrying around a second laptop or the constant frustration of using the finicky Wi-Fi on virtual machines. But there's another option: installing a Kali subsystem on your Windows computer as a convenient compromise.

Hacking Windows 10: How to Break into Somebody's Computer Without a Password (Exploiting the System)

After a hacker has configured Metasploit on a remote private server, created a resource script for automation, and created a simple payload, he or she can begin the process of remotely controlling someone's Windows 10 computer with just a few moments of physical access — even if the computer is off.

How To: Use SELinux Targeted Policy to Secure Your Hosts

Hackers often rely on lazy system admins and unpatched vulnerabilities to get access to a host. Keeping intruders off of our machines requires us to update daily, only run the services we need, and read the code, among other things, but we can still make mistakes. Luckily for us, we can limit the damage caused by those mistakes by running SELinux.

Exploit Development: How to Defeat a Non-Executable Stack with ret2libc

After a long hiatus, we shall once again emerge from the shadowy depths of the internet to build an exploit. This time, we'll be looking at how to defeat a non-executable stack by using the ret2libc technique — a lean, mean, and brilliant way of exploiting a stack overflow vulnerability.

How To: The White Hat's Guide to Choosing a Virtual Private Server

Conducting phishing campaigns and hosting Metasploit sessions from a trusted VPS is important to any professional security researcher, pentester, or white hat hacker. However, the options are quite limited since most providers have zero-tolerance policies for any kind of hacking, good or bad. After researching dozens of products, we came out with 5 potentials that are ideal for Null Byte readers.

How To: Use U2F Security Keys on Your Smartphone to Access Your Google Account with Advanced Protection

Security-minded users can reduce the risk of phishing by enabling Advanced Protection on important Google accounts, requiring a U2F security token to log in. Using these keys isn't intuitive on most popular smartphone platforms, and you can find yourself locked out if you don't plan ahead. You'll need to learn and practice using U2F keys on your device before enabling this layer of security.

How To: Hack Your Neighbor with a Post-It Note, Part 3 (Executing the Attack)

Now that we have our payload hosted on our VPS, as well as Metasploit installed, we can begin developing the webpage which will trick our "John Smith" target into opening our malicious file. Once he has, we can take over his computer.

How To: Hack Your Neighbor with a Post-It Note, Part 2 (Setting Up the Attack)

In the previous article in this short series, we learned how to find our neighbor's name using publicly accessible information and how to monitor device activity on their home network. With this information at our disposal, it's time to get into installing and configuring the necessary tools to begin our attack on John Smith's computer.

How To: Hack Your Neighbor with a Post-It Note, Part 1 (Performing Recon)

Using just a small sticky note, we can trigger a chain of events that ultimately results in complete access to someone's entire digital and personal life.

How To: Track Down a Tinder Profile with Location Spoofing on Google Chrome

Dating websites allow you to see a person in a very intimate context, framing their successes and accomplishments in life to an important audience. The information contained in these profiles often can't be found elsewhere, offering a unique look into the personal life of the user.

How To: Use Remote Port Forwarding to Slip Past Firewall Restrictions Unnoticed

Local port forwarding is good when you want to use SSH to pivot into a non-routable network. But if you want to access services on a network when you can't configure port-forwarding on a router and don't have VPN access to the network, remote port forwarding is the way to go.

How To: Use Google's Advanced Protection Program to Secure Your Account from Phishing

It's easy to have your password stolen. Important people like executives, government workers, journalists, and activists face sophisticated phishing attacks to compromise their online accounts, often targeting Google account credentials. To reduce this risk, Google created the Advanced Protection Program, which uses U2F security keys to control account access and make stolen passwords worthless.

How To: Scan Websites for Potential Vulnerabilities Using Vega in Kali Linux

Withstanding an attack from a motivated hacker is one of most important responsibilities a system administrator must undertake. This is especially true for websites that may contain sensitive customer information and a high volume of users. So it's important for a sysadmin to take proactive measures to find and fix vulnerabilities in their websites.

Exploit Development: How to Write Specific Values to Memory with Format String Exploitation

During our last adventure into the realm of format string exploitation, we learned how we can manipulate format specifiers to rewrite a program's memory with an arbitrary value. While that's all well and good, arbitrary values are boring. We want to gain full control over the values we write, and today we are going to learn how to do just that.

How To: Inject Coinhive Miners into Public Wi-Fi Hotspots

Coinhive, a JavaScript cryptocurrency miner, was reportedly discovered on the BlackBerry Mobile website. It was placed there by hackers who exploited a vulnerability in the site's e-commerce software that allowed them to anonymously mine cryptocurrency every time the website was viewed. There's no doubt Coinhive, an innovative mining method, is being abused and exploited by hackers in the wild.

How To: Easily Detect CVEs with Nmap Scripts

Nmap is possibly the most widely used security scanner of its kind, in part because of its appearances in films such as The Matrix Reloaded and Live Free or Die Hard. Still, most of Nmap's best features go under-appreciated by hackers and pentesters, one of which will improve our abilities to quickly identify exploits and vulnerabilities when scanning servers.

How To: Configure Port Forwarding to Create Internet-Connected Services

Ports allow network and internet-connected devices to interact using specified channels. While servers with dedicated IP addresses can connect directly to the internet and make ports publicly available, a system behind a router on a local network may not be open to the rest of the web. To overcome this, port forwarding can be used to make these devices publicly accessible.

How To: Use the Koadic Command & Control Remote Access Toolkit for Windows Post-Exploitation

Koadic allows hackers to monitor and control exploited Windows systems remotely. The tool facilitates remote access to Windows devices via the Windows Script Host, working with practically every version of Windows. Koadic is capable of sitting entirely in memory to evade detection and is able to cryptographically secure its own web command-and-control communications.

How To: Exploring Kali Linux Alternatives: Set Up the Ultimate Beginner Arch Linux Hacking Distro with Manjaro & BlackArch

There's no doubt Kali has established itself as the most popular penetration distribution available. However, just because it's the fan favorite of beginners and security researchers doesn't make it right for everyone. Manjaro Linux is a beginner-friendly Arch-based distribution which can be easily weaponized with the Black Arch expansion, creating a friendlier first-time Arch experience.

How To: Use the Cowrie SSH Honeypot to Catch Attackers on Your Network

The internet is constantly under siege by bots searching for vulnerabilities to attack and exploit. While conventional wisdom is to prevent these attacks, there are ways to deliberately lure hackers into a trap in order to spy on them, study their behavior, and capture samples of malware. In this tutorial, we'll be creating a Cowrie honeypot, an alluring target to attract and trap hackers.

How To: How Hackers Use Hidden Data on Airline Boarding Passes to Hack Flights

Millions of travelers pass through airports each day without understanding how powerful and insecure a boarding pass can be. Anyone can scan the boarding pass barcode with a mobile app, allowing access to frequent-flyer accounts and even a passenger's temporary airline account. In this guide, we will explore how hackers scan and decode the information contained in a boarding pass barcode and why.

How To: Use the Chrome Browser Secure Shell App to SSH into Remote Devices

Many guides on Null Byte require using the Secure Shell (SSH) to connect to a remote server. Unfortunately for beginners, learning to use SSH can become a confusing mix of third-party programs and native OS support. For Chrome OS users, using SSH is even more difficult. We'll fix this by using the Chrome Secure Shell app to establish an SSH connection from any device that can run a Chrome browser.

Exploit Development: How to Read & Write to a Program's Memory Using a Format String Vulnerability

Format strings are a handy way for programmers to whip up a string from several variables. They are designed to save the programmer time and allow their code to look much cleaner. Unbeknownst to some programmers, format strings can also be used by an attacker to compromise their entire program. In this guide, we are going to look at just how we can use a format string to exploit a running program.

How To: Enable the New Native SSH Client on Windows 10

For years, PuTTy has reigned supreme as the way to establish a Secure Shell (SSH) connection. However, those days are numbered with the addition of the OpenSSH server and client in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which brings Windows up to par with macOS and Linux's ability to use SSH natively.

How To: Create a Native SSH Server on Your Windows 10 System

With the addition of the OpenSSH client and server in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, you no longer have to rely on third-party programs to open an SSH server and connect to a Windows machine. While still a beta feature, this represents a long-overdue update fulfilling a promise made back in 2015.

Exploit Development: How to Manipulate Code Execution with the Instruction Pointer

The one thing that separates a script kiddy from a legitimate hacker or security professional is the ability to program. Script kiddies use other people's tools, while hackers and security pros write their own tools. To that end, we're going to see how a stack overflow vulnerability allows us to flood a variable with enough input to overwrite the instruction pointer with our own commands.

How To: Exploit PHP File Inclusion in Web Apps

File inclusion can allow an attacker to view files on a remote host they shouldn't be able to see, and it can even allow the attacker to run code on a target.

How To: Log into Your Raspberry Pi Using a USB-to-TTL Serial Cable

Connecting to your headless Raspberry Pi on the go typically requires a network connection or carrying around bulky peripheral hardware like a screen and keyboard. With the help of an old-school connecting standard, though, you can log into your Pi from any computer using a simple cable. If you don't have a power source, you can also power your Linux distro over the cable at the same time.

How To: Use VNC to Remotely Access Your Raspberry Pi from Other Devices

With Virtual Network Computing, you don't need to carry a spare keyboard, mouse, or monitor to use your headless computer's full graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, you can connect remotely to it through any available computer or smartphone.

How To: Use SSH Local Port Forwarding to Pivot into Restricted Networks

SSH is a powerful tool with more uses than simply logging into a server. This protocol, which stands for Secure Shell, provides X11 forwarding, port forwarding, secure file transfer, and more. Using SSH port forwarding on a compromised host with access to a restricted network can allow an attacker to access hosts within the restricted network or pivot into the network.