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News: Hack Your Computer's BIOS to Unlock Hidden Settings, Overclocking & More

Your BIOS, or Basic Input Output System, is the firmware on your motherboard responsible for initializing your computer's hardware when it is first powered on. It probes for video adapters, RAM, the whole works. The BIOS provides a small library of basic input/output functions used to operate and control the peripherals such as the keyboard, text display functions and so forth, and these software library functions are callable by external software such as the OS and system software within sai...

News: What the Heck Was Stuxnet!?

As many of you know, I firmly believe that hacking is THE skill of the future. Although the term "hacking" often conjures up the image of a pimple-faced script kiddie in their mother's basement transfixed by a computer screen, the modern image of the hacker in 2015 is that of a professional in a modern, well-lit office, hacking and attempting to development exploits for national security purposes. As the world becomes more and more digitally-dependent and controlled, those that can find their...

News: Reality of VPNs, Proxies, and Tor

Hello Strangers, This is my first article for null-byte and its about staying anonymous on the Internet. But the question is why would you want to stay anonymous online?

Digital Lock-Picking: This Simple Arduino Hack Opens Millions of Hotel Keycard Doors

It used to be that you only had to worry about maids rummaging through your belongings in your locked hotel room. But now anyone with 50 bucks of hardware and some programming skills can hack their way in—as long as it's locked by keycard.

Antivirus Bypass: Friendly Reminder to Never Upload Your Samples to VirusTotal

For many of you, this is common knowledge. But I still regularly see comments posted here and elsewhere asking, "This <AV bypass> doesn't work, because when I upload my payload to VirusTotal...."

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: Change from BASH to zsh

Hello fellow Null-Byters today I will be showing you how to change from the simple but powerful BASH system to a more powerful and faster Z - Shell system. This change can be permanent if you want but doesn't have to be, and it is an extremely simple one to perform.

News: Use ProtonMail More Securely Through the Tor Network

ProtonMail has long been the favorite of journalists and security-conscious professionals, with Edward Snowden the most famous example. But these days, everyone cares about anonymity, so it's no surprise that ProtonMail currently has over 2 million users. And now the service is even better.

News: Anonymity Networks. Don't use one, use all of them!

Introduction The 3 major anonymity networks on the Internet are Tor/Onionland, I2P and Freenet. If you feel confused on which one is the "best" one to use the answer is simple. Use all three!

News: 'Beast' Cracks Billions of Passwords in Seconds

Dr. Michael Pound, a computer science researcher and professor at the University of Nottingham, uses hashcat and 4 GPUs in parallel to go through 1o billion hashes a second in this Computerphile video. He calls his deep-learning server the "Beast." If you're new to cracking passwords, he does a great job breaking down the process of what's going on as hashcat does its magic.

News: Wallpapers

I got bored so i wanted to know what each of you got as a wallpaper. Here is mine, post yours in the comment.

News: Block Cell Phone Signals on the Carrier of Your Choice by Hacking a Radio Frequency Jammer

Cell phone jammers, a DIY endeavor for the darker crowd. I'm pretty sure we've all considered having one at some point: whether the obnoxiously loud woman next to you is announcing private bedroom stories to a crowd on the subway, or your kids are grounded from using the phone (and consequently snagged a hidden prepaid phone), sometimes having a cell phone jammer comes in handy.

News: Hak5 Just Released the Packet Squirrel

Hak5's products get a lot of attention. Popping up in popular shows like Mr. Robot, their hacking tools are bold proof of concepts with space built into the design for the community to add their own tweaks and modifications. On Friday, Oct. 27, Null Byte attended the Hak5 release event in San Francisco to check out their latest devices, including the new Packet Squirrel.

News: Simple Man-in-the-Middle Script: For Script Kiddies

This Is for the Script Kiddies: This tutorial is about a script written for the How to Conduct a Simple Man-in-the-Middle Attack written by the one and only OTW.

News: The Hacking of Blackhat, the Movie

A while back, I wrote review of my favorite hacking movies of all time. Two of my key criteria were; (1) how realistic was the hacking, and (2) are the hackers portrayed as the "good guys." This past winter, a new hacker movie was released, appropriately named Blackhat starring Chris Hemsworth (from Thor fame) as a blackhat hacker who is released from prison to stop a notorious and destructive hacker that only he can stop. Although the movie did very poorly at the box office, I thought it was...

News: 9 Easy Exploits to Raise Combat Skills in Skyrim

Skyrim is an enormous RPG recently released by Bethesda. After many long years of waiting (I had 1000's of hours clocked into its predecessor, Oblivion, way back in 8th grade) the game is finally out and it surpasses everyone's expectations—save for removing custom spell crafting... Why, Bethesda?

News: WannaCry Ransomware Only Works if You Haven't Updated Your Computer in Months

As the world goes into a frenzy over the latest strain of WannaCry ransomware, it might be a good time to remember to update all your devices. Yes, those little reminders your phone and computer throw at you every now and then to update your junk can be really annoying, but not without merit.

News: Samy's MagSpoof Hacking Device Was Just Featured on Mr. Robot

Samy Kamkar, security researcher and friend of WonderHowTo, just had one of his devices featured in Mr. Robot.

News: Even Microsoft Acknowledges the Superiority of the Bash Shell Now

As most of you know, I am a strong advocate for using Linux for hacking. In fact, I would go so far as to say that you cannot be a hacker without knowing Linux well. I laid out various reasons for this in my "Why Every Hacker Should Know & Use Linux" article, and I even have a lengthy, continuing series on Linux Basics to help those new to Linux master it.

News: A Brief History of Hacking

Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Hacking has a long and storied history in the U.S. and around the world. It did not begin yesterday, or even at the advent of the 21st century, but rather dates back at least 40 years. Of course, once the internet migrated to commercial use in the 1990s, hacking went into hyperdrive.

News: Why YOU Should Study Digital Forensics

As many of you know, I have been running a couple of series here on Null Byte about digital forensics called Digital Forensics for the Aspiring Hacker and Digital Forensics Using Kali. Although many readers have seemed to enjoy these series, just as many seem to be pondering, "Why should I study digital forensics?"

News: Kaspersky Offs Two Ransomware Strains

According to security firm Kaspersky Lab, CoinVault and Bitcryptor ransomware are officially dead.

News: ProntonMail under DDoS Attack

Recently the newly famous ProtonMail service was under attack by DDoS attack. This attack was believed to be the hacking group Armada Collective.

News: How to Study for the White Hat Hacker Associate Certification (CWA)

Since I first announced the new Null Byte recognition for excellence a few weeks ago, several of you have written me asking, "How can I study for this certification exam, and what material will be covered on the exam?" Now I have an answer for you. The White Hat Hacker Associate (CWA) will cover 14 domains or areas. Everything you need to know is here on Null Byte. There will be no questions that are not covered here on this site, guaranteed.

News: A Game of Real Hacking

Bad news first: It's not out yet, but it's coming really soon. The premise for the game is this:

News: FBI Shuts Down One of the Biggest Hacking Forums

FBI has taken down a notorious hacking forum called "darkode" where cyber criminals bought, sold and traded hacked databases, stolen bank accounts, and malicious software that steal information from other computer systems and helped each other to infiltrate other computers. The FBI called the site one of the most serious threats to data security in the world. criminal charges has been filed against 12 individuals who were associated with the forum and the investigation is still ongoing, more ...

News: Many Lookup Engines

Hello I have now asked for help a few times, so I figured I should contribute with what I can offer as of right now, which is many valuable sites if you need to look someone up.

News: Hacking SCADA

Welcome back, my hacker novitiates!

WANTED: Hackers for Bug Bounties

In previous posts here, I have pointed out that hackers are in high demand around the world and in nearly every industry. Every military and espionage unit of every country is trying to hire high-quality, experienced hackers as fast as they can to hack their adversaries' computer systems in order to gain a strategic advantage and to spy.

News: Best Hacking Software

When i went to class today, a good friend asked me a question. He wanted to know what the best hacking software was to basically do everything. What i told him was this: Well there isn't an "Ultimate" tool boot there are a number of tools which deserve a "Medal." So what i'm trying to say here... What are some of the best hacking tools available right now? For starters i created a list with some of the tools.

News: Hacker Points Out iOS Security Flaw That Allows iPhone Text Spoofing

Security researcher and iPhone hacker pod2g has brought attention to a flaw in Apple's iOS that allows the user to change the reply address of an SMS message. This bug has been a part of the iPhone's SMS since the first iPhone in 2007, but Apple has yet to address it. Basically, there's a section in the text payload called User Data Heading (UDH) that controls some advanced features, one of which is the reply address. By changing the reply address of a text message, you can make someone send ...

News: 8 Wireshark Filters Every Wiretapper Uses to Spy on Web Conversations and Surfing Habits

In my Wireshark article, we talked a little bit about packet sniffing, but we focused more on the underlying protocols and models. Now, I'd like to dive right back into Wireshark and start stealing packets.

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.

Lock Down Your Web Server: 10 Easy Steps to Stop Hackers from Attacking

You want to put out a live web server, but you don't want to be owned in the process. An expert eye for security is not needed if you take a few basic steps in locking down the hatches. Most successful attacks today are not the complex, time-consuming tasks you might think, but simple lapses in policy that a hacker can take advantage of to compromise your server.

Uncrackable File Sharing: Securely Transfer Your Secrets with 4096-Bit Encryption

Do you need to email your wife your Social Security number? Send confidential business plans to your partner in Thailand? Send your hacker buddies the recovered hashes from last night's breach? Try using GPG, a valuable and easy to use open-source encryption program.

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.

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.

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.

Goodnight Byte: HackThisSite, Realistic 3 - Real Hacking Simulations

Last Friday's mission was to accomplish solving HackThisSite, realistic 3. The third mission in a series of realistic simulation missions was designed to be exactly like situations you may encounter in the real world, requesting we help a friend restore a defaced website about posting peaceful poetry.