Weekend Homework: How to Become a Null Byte Contributor (2/17/2012)

Grab your thinking caps and get your hack on. Null Byte is officially seeking contributors on a weekly basis who are willing to take the time to educate the Null Byte community on anything, from hardware hacks to life hacks. Contributors that write tutorials will be featured on the Null Byte blog, as well as the front page of WonderHowTo (providing it's up to par, of course).

Past contributions led to some amazing articles on text encryption and decryption, scanning for viruses in Windows, coding a basic TCP/IP client, sending text messages in Python, and more.

There is no need to be intimidated if you fear you lack the writing skills. I will edit your rough drafts if necessary and get them looking top-notch! You can write tutorials on any skill level, about anything you feel like sharing that is related to tech, hacking, psychology and social manipulation, or whatever other life hacks you think mesh with our community.

Can I Help in Another Way?

This isn't exclusive to tutorials. Even if you simply post useful links and articles to the corkboard, you are doing the community a huge favor, because at some point, someone will need the information you have provided. Let's continue to make Null Byte the best forum ever by stuffing it with the latest and greatest hacking tutorials and topics.

If you have skills and want to share knowledge on any of the topics below, please leave a response in the comments with which topic you would like to write, post directly to the corkboard, or message me privately. If you have any additional ideas at all, please submit them below.

This Weeks Topics

1. Misc. Social Engineering—Throw us any social engineering experiences you may have, whether it be scoring something for free or getting private information, do tell. You should include detailed methods and the psychology behind why it works.
2. Advanced Social Engineering Tactics Series: Interrogation Psychology—Social engineering is something I hold dearly. Teach the community how the art of interrogation works. Some great sources are the official CIA manuals on it (if you can find them).
3. Advanced Social Engineering Tactics Series: Reading Body Language—Teach the community how body language and signals can mean certain things to the observer. Some key points to hit would be: lying, fear, etc.
4. How to Make a LED Flashlight from a Dead Laptop Battery—Just as it says. Teach the community how to rip the cells out of a dead laptop battery, identify the good ones, and then use them to power a flashlight!
5. Post to All of Your Social Media Statuses at Once with Python—This is originally one I was doing myself, but it came to a stand-still when I learned how closed the Google+ API is still. Currently, you can only read profiles and shares. Hack a way around this, and you are officially less lazy than I (who enjoys playing with mostly-closed APIs).
6. Teach Your Wireless Router New Tricks by JTAGing—Give the community a good guide on JTAGing and flashing with the infamous DD-WRT firmware.
7. A Guide to a Healthy Brain—Go over methods to keep your memory fresh. You can include vitamins and activities that stimulate brain activity, growth and development. The brain is the most important organ, so keep it healthy!
8. Advanced Social Engineering Tactics Series: How to Analyze Personalities on Sight—Give us the rundown on how to read a person's personality using the 16 base personality types. Would be cool to include some psychological explanation, like "If a person does this, they will do this because...".
9. Batch Image Converter in Python—Create a script in Python to covert a batch of images to a specified resolution, convenient for storing larger pictures, keeping them on phones, or emailing.
10. Advanced Social Engineering Tactics Series: How to Lie to Someone and Get Away with It—I'm looking for this one to be more of a psychology behind lying, and how to tell when others are lying. This is a helpful skill to have.

Photo by cortnimarazzo