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News: Stop CISPA NOW!!!

The US government is trying to push another anti-piracy bill through without anyone knowing so please click the link and sign it to tell Congress that they can't get away with this.

News: Gathering Data for Fun and Profit

Oh Data, You so Awesome! We are going to use Node.JS to gather us some data. Given nodes plethora of well abstracted network abilities and it's deep evened nature, it will make quick work of plugging into various data sources and gathering / making good use of said data.

News: Secure Your Wireless Network from Pillage and Plunder in 8 Easy Steps

Wireless networks. Nowadays, everyone uses 'em, but most don't secure 'em. On average, I can drive up and down any block in my city and find at least one or two open or semi-open networks on any given day. With some changed MAC addresses for good measure, an attacker can use your network as a spring board for who knows what. When the police come a few days after, they are coming to your door—and not to talk about how nice your lawn is. Don't be that guy.

Hack Logs and Linux Commands: What's Going On Here?

This morning, I received a message from a friend who was reading a hack log, and she had some questions about the commands used. This got me thinking, as Linux has a ton of commands and some can be archaic, yet useful. We are going to go over everything you need to know to read a hack log and hopefully implant the steps in your head for future use.

IPsec Tools of the Trade: Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

Pull up outside any construction site and you'll see tools scattered about—hammers, jigsaws, nail guns, hydraulic pipe benders—these are the tools of the trade. You would be hard-pressed to build a home or office building with just your hands! On that same page, security professionals also have their own go-to tools that they use on the job site, only their job site is your server.

News: Finding Hidden Metadata in Images (Oh, the Possibilities)

Did you know there is hidden data in your digital pictures? Well, there is, and that data might be a security risk to you. Think back at all of those pictures you're in and are connected with. I'm sure some of those you'd like to distance yourself from. And surely you wouldn't mind checking out the metadata in a few of those images. In this article, we'll be going over how to do just that.

News: Massive Leak! Wikileaks publishes Stratfor emails.

Monday 27 February, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agenc...

News: New Variant of Zeus Trojan Loses Reliance On C&C Server

This week, researchers from Symantec shared information on the recent discovery of a new variant of the Zeus Trojan. This new variant of the popular and ever-changing banking Trojan makes use of P2P communication exclusively, making the botnet have no single point of failure and ensuring it can be kept alive and gathering data that the cybercriminal can profit from. In other words, this new variant requires no central Command-and-Control server to control the bots.

News: Anonymity, Darknets and Staying Out of Federal Custody, Part Three: Hidden Services

For a moment, picture a situation where you want to host some files or images, but you do not want it traced back to you. Perhaps you're working on a project with others and need secure data storage. Anonymity is the new shield of the 21st century—and you best protect yourself. As always here at Null Byte, we are trying to make that happen. Before someone can learn how to root a box, they need to learn how not to be found. I can not stress that point enough.

News: Anonymity, Darknets and Staying Out of Federal Custody, Part Two: Onions and Daggers

In the first part of this series, we learned about darknets, as well as how they came about. But these patches of forgotten Internet are not the oasis of free information you might think. Despite being hidden—or just harder to come across—these networks are no more safe then anywhere else on the 'clear' Internet. The nature of networking and routing means your location is always known in server logs. It only takes one phone call to your ISP with your IP address to obtain both your physical ad...

News: The Right Linux Distro

As many of you Null Byters may know, I was planning on writing this article a week or two ago. Better late than never! So, let's get right to it then—choosing the right Linux distro for your needs.

Uncrackable: Secure Your Secrets with 4096-Bit Encryption

As you progress in the world of information security, you'll find yourself in situations where data protection is paramount. No doubt you will have files to hide and secrets to share, so I'm going to show you how to use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG or GPG for short) to encrypt and decrypt as you need. GPG is a great open-source version of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), a similar application used for encryption, but licensing and patent problems led to the development of GPG in its wake.

Farewell Byte: Goodbye Alex, Welcome Allen

Hello, fellow Null Byters. Today, with mixed feelings, I want to let you know that this is my last official post as the admin of Null Byte. I've come to the decision that I need to spend more time focusing on my studies. Over the past 5 months, I have enjoyed building this community and teaching people unorthodox methods of doing things, creating things, and hacking them. But I'm also excited to be delving deeper into the studies that brought me here in the first place.

News: Art Meets Information Liberation with the Transparency Grenade

Julian Oliver created the Transparency Grenade in January 2012 for the Studio Weise7 exhibition at Labor 8. It's a transparent device with a "payload" built from an ARM Chip, an Arduino Nano, a mic, and a strong Wi-Fi antenna. It taps into wireless networks and logs emails, webpages, images, and voice to a publicly available online map showing its "detonation" location. Apparently, development for an Android version (sans the pretty plastic shell) is under way thanks to interested donors. See...

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 5 - Real Hacking Simulations

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, Realistic 5, the fifth and last in my series of realistic hacking simulation missions. This time, telemarketers are invading people's privacy, and it was up to us to stop them! The job was to get root on the site and delete the contact database in order to return the right of privacy to its victims.

Community Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 5 - Real Hacking Simulations

Eventually, we plan on doing some root the box competitions here at Null Byte, but we're still looking for a server to play on. Anyone want to donate one? You won't regret it. Root the box is like 'king of the hill', except you have to hack a server and maintain access. Each server will have numerous known security holes, but until then, let's get back to the regular weekly coding sessions and realistic hacking missions on HackThisSite.

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 4 - Real Hacking Simulations

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, realistic 4. The fourth in a series of realistic simulation missions was designed to be exactly like a situation you may encounter in the real world. This time, we are told "Fischer's Animal Products is a company that slaughters animals and turns their skin into overpriced products which are then sold to rich bastards! Help animal rights activists increase political awareness by hacking their mailing list."

News: Catch Creeps and Thieves in Action: Set Up a Motion-Activated Webcam DVR in Linux

When it comes to webcams these days, most people are using their laptops over desktops. The cameras are centered, integrated, and require no configuring. They're a cinch and usually have great resolution. So, then what do we do with all of those old wired desktop webcams that we've accrued over the years? Even if you still use an external USB one, chances are you're not using it daily, so why not come up with a better use for it?

Community Contest: Code the Best Hacking Tool, Win Bragging Rights

Here's something fun for the Null Byte community to do—a coding competition! This week, I wanted to get everyone involved by offering you all a nice library of possible program types to choose from and try to code. At the end of this competition, all of the submitted programs will be reviewed by the community and myself. The coder that receives the most votes will be dubbed THE BEST.

News: Awesome Trick with Prepaid "GoPhones" Nabs You Free Text Messaging for Life

You might be sitting there thinking that I'm crazy, but the truth is you're only partially right. You can get free text messaging for life, all for a cheap, one-time fee. But, how can that be possible? An exploit in AT&T's prepaid GoPhones is the culprit behind this sweet, oh-so rare opportunity for exploitation. The exploit grants a lifetime of free texting, assuming that the company stays afloat from now until the end of time.