Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! I have already done a few tutorials on password cracking, including ones for Linux and Windows, WEP and WPA2, and even online passwords using THC Hydra. Now, I thought it might be worthwhile to begin a series on password cracking in general. Password cracking is both an art and a science, and I hope to show you the many ways and subtleties involved.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! There are innumerable ways to hack a system. We must not overlook any of the possibilities if we want to "own" the system. As systems become more and more secure, we need to be vigilant in our search for weaknesses. In this hack, we'll look at abusing the trust that a user innately has for software updates to install our own listener/rootkit on their system.
With a lot of Null Byters playing around with Linux because of its excessive use in the hacking world, some of you are bound to run into some trouble with the installation at some point or another. If you make a mistake, or you're intimidated by the wonky-looking installation screen, you may want to just stick with Windows. However, you may notice it can be hard to go back once you've crossed a certain point in the installation. Your Windows installation may be broken or unbootable.
While SSH is a powerful tool for controlling a computer remotely, not all applications can be run over the command line. Some apps (like Firefox) and hacking tools (like Airgeddon) require opening multiple X windows to function, which can be accomplished by taking advantage of built-in graphical X forwarding for SSH.
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.
Null Byte users have often requested video content, but the question has always been what format would best serve our community. This week, we partnered with Null Space Labs, a hackerspace in Los Angeles, to test the waters by hosting a series of talks on ethical hacking for students in Pasadena Computer Science Club. We invited students and Null Byte writers to deliver talks on Wi-Fi hacking, MITM attacks, and rogue devices like the USB Rubber Ducky.
Those of you who have been a part of the Null Byte community for even a short while know that I sincerely and firmly believe that hacking is the most important skill set of the future.
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! A you know, Mr. Robot is my favorite TV show this year, and not just for the realistic hacking. Rami Malek, the actor who plays Elliot, is incomparable in his depiction of a young man with social anxiety who is alienated from a superficial, materialistic society and wants to make a better world. I believe we will see a lot more of this actor in coming years.
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! As you know, Metasploit is an exploitation framework that every hacker should be knowledgeable of and skilled at. It is one of my favorite hacking tools available.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! It has become clear from some of your questions that quite a few of you are unfamiliar with the hexadecimal system, or simply, hex. The hexadecimal system is used throughout computing and if you have never studied this Base16 numering system, it may appear relatively opaque.
In my last tutorial, I talked about creating a virus inside of a Word Document in the scenario of a mass-mailer attack. In this post, however, I'm going to be covering creating a fake image or screenshot with a meterpreter backdoor hidden inside to be used in a similar scenario. Step 1: Creating the Virus
Hi all, Pro Hackers/Crackers, Let's see how we can use batch for our own Protection instead of exploiting someone with it.
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...
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! Now that we have begun this trip down web app hacking lane, we need to first address target reconnaissance. Like any hack, reconnaissance is critical. (Are you tired of me saying that yet?)
Pyrit is one of the most powerful WPA/WPA2 cracking tools in a hacker's arsenal, with the ability to benchmark a computer's CPU speeds, analyze capture files for crackable handshakes, and even tap into GPU password-cracking power. To demonstrate how quickly it can hack a WPA/WPA2 password, we'll use it to play a Wi-Fi hacking CTF game anyone can practice for less than $10.
Metasploit is an extremely popular pentesting tool capable of enumeration, exploitation, and injecting shell code, and is a part of almost every hacking toolkit. So there's no way I could leave this out of our series on getting your Mac set up for hacking.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Digital forensics is one of the fields often overlooked by aspiring hackers. In a rush to exploit every and any system they can, they often ignore learning digital forensics—the field that may lead to them being traced.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! In this series, I am trying to develop your knowledge of digital forensics, which is valuable whether you're choosing a career in it or just want to know how your hacker activity can be traced. Few professional digital forensic investigators have a hacking background, but the best ones do.
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A short while ago, I started a new series called "How to Spy on Anyone." The idea behind this series is that computer hacking is increasingly being used in espionage and cyber warfare, as well as by private detectives and law enforcement to solve cases. I am trying to demonstrate, in this series, ways that hacking is being used in these professions. For those of you who are training for those careers, I dedicate this series.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to see, and I'll try to honor as many requests as I can.
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Recently, I demonstrated a hack where you could redirect traffic intended for one site, such as bankofamerica.com, to your fake website. Of course, to really make this work, you would need to make a replica of the site you were spoofing, or better yet, you could simply simply make a copy of the original site and host it on your own server!
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! The more we know about a system or network, the better our chances of owning it and not leaving a trace for investigators to follow. One of the often overlooked sources for information is the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Many rookie hackers are not even aware of it, but it can prove to be a treasure trove of information, if you understand how it works and how to hack it.
I've done numerous tutorials in Null Byte demonstrating the power of Metasploit's meterpreter. With the meterpreter on the target system, you have nearly total command of the victim.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! I've written a couple of articles on reconnaissance and its importance, and as I've said before, a good hacker will spend 3 to 4 more times doing reconnaissance than actually exploiting the system. If your recon isn't good, you'll likely fail, or worse—end up serving time and becoming Bubba's wife for a couple years. I can't say it enough—recon is critical.
In my last hack blog on crashing your roommates Win7 system, we started looking at client- side attacks. As promised, we will be looking at some more client-side attacks.
Windows users have been getting a lot of bad news about their security lately. First, we found out that passwords in Windows 7 and 8 can easily be exploited if password hints are enabled, and now, Russian password-cracking software developer Elcomsoft has found another huge vulnerability.
This is my first contribution in an ongoing series on detailing the best free, open source hacking and penetration tools available. My goal is to show you some of the quality tools that IT security experts are using every day in their jobs as network security and pen-testing professionals. There are hundreds of tools out there, but I will focus and those that meet four key criteria:
No operating system is stricken with as many vulnerabilities as Windows, and it's often a race to release the latest patches to fix things. From an attacker's point of view, knowing which patches are present on a Windows machine can make or break successful exploitation. Today, we will be covering three methods of patch enumeration, using Metasploit, WMIC, and Windows Exploit Suggester.
You may not know what HTTP is exactly, but you definitely know that every single website you visit starts with it. Without the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, there'd be no easy way to view all the text, media, and data that you're able to see online. However, all communication between your browser and a website are unencrypted, which means it can be eavesdropped on.
This tutorial was written with Windows 7 in mind, but the principle applies to all versions starting from 7.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, we can only get a command shell on our target system. For instance, with Metasploit, it's not always possible to get the all powerful Meterpreter on our target system. In other cases, we may be able to connect to a command shell via Netcat or Cryptcat.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! One of those areas of Linux that Windows users invariably struggle with is the concept of "mounting" devices and drives. In the Windows world, drives and devices are automatically "mounted" without any user effort or knowledge. Well, maybe a bit of knowledge. Most Windows users know to unmount their flash drive before removing it, but they usually think of it as "ejecting" it.
Since the day of the Xbox 360 release, storage space for the device has been overpriced beyond belief. OEM 250GB HDD models still cost $110 USD! A 250GB hard drive should not destroy my wallet, Microsoft. Storage space, especially on HDDs, is cheap. You can buy a removable 2TB external for only $100 USD, so it's a little beyond my comprehension to see how they calculate their MSRP to yield such a large profit. On the other hand, Xbox 360 had very impressive hardware specs back in the day, equ...
There are a lot of things on your computer that can reveal information about you when you are surfing the Internet. If you are like me, then you will do anything to maintain your privacy and prevent those little leaks of information from happening. Here's a list of a few of the "threats" that can reveal information about you:
A macOS computer can reveal a lot of information about the owner, including which Wi-Fi network they have permission to access. With an Arduino-based attack, we'll use a five-dollar setup to inject a rogue Wi-Fi network and steal the list of trusted Wi-Fi networks, allowing us to see where the computer has been.
After exploiting a vulnerable target, scooping up a victim's credentials is a high priority for hackers, since most people reuse passwords. Those credentials can get hackers deeper into a network or other accounts, but digging through the system by hand to find them is difficult. A missed stored password could mean missing a big opportunity. But the process can largely be automated with LaZagne.
The USB Rubber Ducky comes with two software components, the payload script to be deployed and the firmware which controls how the Ducky behaves and what kind of device it pretends to be. This firmware can be reflashed to allow for custom Ducky behaviors, such as mounting USB mass storage to copy files from any system the Duck is plugged into.
This is the second installment of the short series on how to remove user passwords in Windows. Once again this has only been tested on Windows 7. If I can find some time between two jobs and school I'll test all the ways on Windows 10 and Windows 8/8.1.
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! A number of you have written me telling me how much you enjoy the Mr. Robot series on USA Network. I am also a huge fan! If you haven't seen it yet, you should. It may be the best show on TV right now.
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! Now that nearly everyone and everyplace has a computer, you can use those remote computers for some good old "cloak and dagger" spying. No longer is spying something that only the CIA, NSA, KGB, and other intelligence agencies can do—you can learn to spy, too.