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How To: Intercept Security Camera Footage Using the New Hak5 Plunder Bug
In a previous guide, I demonstrated how to extract images from a security camera over Wi-Fi using Wireshark, provided you know the password. If you don't know the password, you can always get physical with the Hak5 Plunder Bug. Using this small LAN tap, we can intercept traffic like images from a Wi-Fi or IP security camera if we can get physical access to the Ethernet cable carrying the data.
Locking Down Linux: Harden Sudo Passwords to Defend Against Hashcat Attacks
Hacker's are always looking for new ways to exploit systems and exfiltrate passwords, even in hashed form. Sophisticated brute-force attacks powered by high-end GPUs can perform millions of password attempts per second. But Ubuntu and Debian users aren't completely helpless. There are ways to harden the hashed password to better defend against Hashcat attacks.
How To: Hijack Chromecasts with CATT to Display Images, Messages, Videos, Sites & More
Giving up your Wi-Fi password can be giving up more control than you think. Because of the way Chromecast and other IoT devices communicate, anyone on the same Wi-Fi network as your device can often make it do whatever they want. With a script called "Cast All the Things," we can hijack a Chromecast to play nearly any kind of media with a single command in terminal.
How To: Track a Target Using Canary Token Tracking Links
Canary tokens are customizable tracking links useful for learning about who is clicking on a link and where it's being shared. Thanks to the way many apps fetch a URL preview for links shared in private chats, canary tokens can even phone home when someone checks a private chat without clicking the link. Canary tokens come in several useful types and can be used even through URL shorteners.
How To: Enumerate NetBIOS Shares with NBTScan & Nmap Scripting Engine
NetBIOS is a service that allows for communication over a network and is often used to join a domain and legacy applications. It is an older technology but still used in some environments today. Since it is an unsecured protocol, it can often be a good starting point when attacking a network. Scanning for NetBIOS shares with NBTScan and the Nmap Scripting Engine is a good way to begin.
Android for Hackers: How to Exfiltrate WPA2 Wi-Fi Passwords Using Android & PowerShell
It's easier than you might think to hack into Wi-Fi routers using just one unrooted Android phone. This method doesn't require brute-forcing the password, a Windows OS for converting PowerShell scripts into EXE format, a reliable VPS for intercepting hacked Wi-Fi passwords, or Metasploit for post-exploitation tricks.
How To: Secure Your Identity & Become Anonymous Online in 2019
Your social security number, credit card information, and medical history can fall into the wrong hands if you're not careful about how and where you share your data online. If you really care about your data, there are tools and techniques you can utilize to protect yourself from cyberstalkers, advertisers, and hackers in a time when digital lives are a high commodity.
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.
Android for Hackers: How to Scan Websites for Vulnerabilities Using an Android Phone Without Root
Auditing websites and discovering vulnerabilities can be a challenge. With RapidScan and UserLAnd combined, anyone with an unrooted Android phone can start hacking websites with a few simple commands.
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.
How To: Intercept Images from a Security Camera Using Wireshark
It's common for IoT devices like Wi-Fi security cameras to host a website for controlling or configuring the camera that uses HTTP instead of the more secure HTTPS. This means anyone with the network password can see traffic to and from the camera, allowing a hacker to intercept security camera footage if anyone is watching the camera's HTTP viewing page.
Android for Hackers: How to Turn an Android Phone into a Hacking Device Without Root
With just a few taps, an Android phone can be weaponized into a covert hacking device capable of running tools such as Nmap, Nikto, and Netcat — all without rooting the device.
How To: Exploring Kali Linux Alternatives: Getting Started with Pentoo for Advanced Software Installations
Kali Linux is probably the most well-known hacking distribution among penetration testers. However, there are alternative distros which offer versatility and advanced package management systems that are absolutely worth considering.
How To: Take Control of Sonos IoT Devices with Python
Many popular IoT devices have terrible security. For instance, a hacker who's on the same Wi-Fi network as a Sonos speaker can assume direct control over the device's behavior. If an IoT device doesn't secure the messages used to control it over a network, it's easy for somebody to write a few Python scripts to make it do whatever they want.
How To: Tactical Nmap for Beginner Network Reconnaissance
When it comes to attacking devices on a network, you can't hit what you can't see. Nmap gives you the ability to explore any devices connected to a network, finding information like the operating system a device is running and which applications are listening on open ports. This information lets a hacker design an attack that perfectly suits the target environment.
How To: Encrypt Your Notes, Photos & Archives with EncryptPad
For anyone wanting to keep information private, plain text is a format of the past. Instead, cheap, powerful encryption is widely available, but often not easy enough to use to attract widespread adoption. An exception to this rule is EncryptPad, an easy to use application that lets you encrypt text, photos, or archives with strong encryption using a password, keyfile, or both.
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.
How To: Use SQL Injection to Run OS Commands & Get a Shell
One of the ultimate goals in hacking is the ability to obtain shells in order to run system commands and own a target or network. SQL injection is typically only associated with databases and their data, but it can actually be used as a vector to gain a command shell. As a lesson, we'll be exploiting a simple SQL injection flaw to execute commands and ultimately get a reverse shell on the server.
How To: Locate & Exploit Devices Vulnerable to the Libssh Security Flaw
Computers all over the world rely on a program called "libssh" to use the SSH communications protocol, which allows trusted users to log in and administer computers remotely. Due to a flaw in libssh, fooling a computer into granting SSH access is as easy as telling it you already have permission. The vulnerability can lead to an attacker gaining complete control over a device.
How To: Check if Your Wireless Network Adapter Supports Monitor Mode & Packet Injection
To hack a Wi-Fi network, you need your wireless card to support monitor mode and packet injection. Not all wireless cards can do this, but you can quickly test one you already own for compatibility, and you can verify that the chipset inside an adapter you're thinking of purchasing will work for Wi-Fi hacking.
How To: Advanced Techniques to Bypass & Defeat XSS Filters, Part 2
Cross-site scripting can be one of the easiest vulnerabilities to discover, but to be successful with this type of attack, it is essential to learn how to get past filters. In the previous guide, we explored some ways to do this, such as abusing attributes and event handlers and tricking the application into accepting unusual characters. Now, let's take a look at more techniques used to defeat filters.
How To: Advanced Techniques to Bypass & Defeat XSS Filters, Part 1
There is no shortage of defenses against cross-site scripting (XSS) since it is so prevalent on the web today. Filters are one of the most common implementations used to prevent this type of attack, usually configured as a blacklist of known bad expressions or based on regex evaluation. But there is hope with a wide variety of techniques that can be used to defeat these filters.
How To: Discover XSS Security Flaws by Fuzzing with Burp Suite, Wfuzz & XSStrike
Cross-site scripting is one of the most common vulnerabilities found on the web today, with repercussions of this type of flaw ranging from harmless defacement to sensitive data exposure. Probing for XSS can be tedious and time-consuming for an attacker, but luckily there are tools available to make things a little easier, including Burp Suite, Wfuzz, and XSStrike.
How To: Listen to Radio Conversations on Android with an RTL-SDR Dongle & OTG Adapter
Everyone from first responders to hotel cleaning staff use radios operating in the sub-megahertz range to communicate, often without even encoding the transmission. While encoding and encryption are increasingly used in radio communication, an RTL-SDR adapter and smartphone are all it takes to start listening in on radio conversations happening around you.
Buyer's Guide: Top 20 Hacker Holiday Gifts of 2018
For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to buy that special hacker in your life a perfect holiday gift. That's why we've taken out the guesswork and curated a list of the top 20 most popular items our readers are buying. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been dying to share this list with someone shopping for you, we've got you covered with our 2018 selection of hacker holiday gifts.
Hacking Gear: 10 Essential Gadgets Every Hacker Should Try
If you've grown bored of day-to-day hacking and need a new toy to experiment with, we've compiled a list of gadgets to help you take password cracking and wireless hacking to the next level. If you're not a white hat or pentester yourself but have one to shop for, whether for a birthday, Christmas present, or other gift-giving reason, these also make great gift ideas.
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: Top 10 Exploit Databases for Finding Vulnerabilities
Hundreds of Windows 10, macOS, and Linux vulnerabilities are disclosed every single week, many of which elude mainstream attention. Most users aren't even aware that newly found exploits and vulnerabilities exist, nor that CVEs can be located by anyone in just a few clicks from a selection of websites online.
How To: Use Commix to Automate Exploiting Command Injection Flaws in Web Applications
The ability to execute system commands via a vulnerable web application makes command injection a fruitful attack vector for any hacker. But while this type of vulnerability is highly prized, it can often take quite a bit of time to probe through an entire application to find these flaws. Luckily, there is a useful tool called Commix that can automate this process for us.
How To: The Ultimate Guide to Hacking macOS
Apple's macOS operating system is just as vulnerable to attacks as any Windows 10 computer or Android smartphone. Hacker's can embed backdoors, evade antivirus with simple commands, and utilize USB flash drives to completely compromise a MacBook. In this always-updated guide, we'll outline dozens of macOS-specific attacks penetration testers should know about.
Hacking macOS: How to Hack a Mac Password Without Changing It
A powered-off MacBook can be compromised in less than three minutes. With just a few commands, it's possible for a hacker to extract a target's password hash and crack it without their knowledge.
How To: Detect When a Device Is Nearby with the ESP8266 Friend Detector
Smartphones and other Wi-Fi enabled devices send radio signals called probe frames to locate nearby wireless networks, which makes them easy to track by listening for their unique MAC address. To show how this kind of tracking works, we can program a NodeMCU in Arduino to sniff the air for packets from any device we want to track, turning on an LED when it's detected nearby.
Hacking macOS: How to Bypass Mojave's Elevated Privileges Prompt by Pretending to Be a Trusted App
The macOS 10.14 security update tried to make parts of the operating system difficult for hackers to access. Let's take a closer look at how its new feature works and what we can do to spoof the origin of an application attempting to access protected data.
How To: Hack Facebook & Gmail Accounts Owned by MacOS Targets
It only takes a few commands to manipulate a MacBook's secure HTTPS traffic and pluck login passwords out of the encrypted data. Let's take Facebook and Gmail hacking to the next level by intercepting Safari and Google Chrome web traffic in real time.
How To: Use an ESP8266 Beacon Spammer to Track Smartphone Users
Smartphones and laptops are constantly sending Wi-Fi radio signals, and many of these signals can be used to track us. In this guide, we'll program a cheap IoT device in Arduino to create hundreds of fake networks with common names; This will cause nearby devices to reveal their real trackable MAC address, and it can even let an attacker take over the phone's data connection with no warning.
Hacking macOS: How to Hack Mojave 10.14 with a Self-Destructing Payload
The newest version of macOS has arrived. While everyone's mind is being blown by Mojave's groundbreaking new Dark Mode, we'll be taking advantage of its insecure file permissions to establish a persistent backdoor with a self-destructing payload that leaves little evidence for forensics.
How To: Uncover Hidden Subdomains to Reveal Internal Services with CT-Exposer
Most companies have services like employee login portals, internal-only subdomains, and test servers they would prefer to keep private. Red teams and white hat hackers can find these obscure and often vulnerable services using a tool designed to help protect users from fraudulent certificates.
How To: Get Started Writing Your Own NSE Scripts for Nmap
The road to becoming a skilled white hat is paved with many milestones, one of those being learning how to perform a simple Nmap scan. A little further down that road lies more advanced scanning, along with utilizing a powerful feature of Nmap called the Nmap Scripting Engine. Even further down the road is learning how to modify and write scripts for NSE, which is what we'll be doing today.
How To: The Easy Way to Use PGP for Encrypting Emails on Windows, Mac & Linux
In order to increase the security and harden the integrity of an email account and its content, you'll want to use PGP on your Windows, macOS, or Linux computer. This is usually the first thing security analysts do to protect communications with encryption, and everyone else should consider it too, especially since there's an easy way to incorporate PGP that anyone can follow.
Hacking macOS: How to Perform Situational Awareness Attacks, Part 2 (Finding Files, History & USB Devices)
It's important to know who you're dealing with after hacking your target's MacBook. Getting remote access is simple, but covertly gathering information about the user and their system can be a challenge.