All phones (yes, iPhones too) slow down over time. As your device gets bogged down by various apps and you begin to run out of storage, it's just an inevitability. That doesn't make it any less frustrating ... I mean, is there anything more annoying than a slow phone? My answer: No. Of course not. It's the single most annoying thing ever.
It's always a good idea to know how an attack works at the very basic level. Manual techniques for exploitation often find holes that even the most sophisticated tool cannot. Sometimes, though, using one of these tools can make things so much easier, especially if one has a solid foundation of how it works. One such tool can help us perform a cross-site request forgery with minimal difficulty.
With iOS 12, Apple is making up for mistakes from the past, with iPhone batteries being no exception. The new update builds upon both battery health and performance throttling tools introduced in iOS 11.3 by offering users more information about your iPhone's battery usage than ever before.
You can never replace the skills and expertise of a professional graphic designer, but Canva comes pretty damn close. It's ridiculously easy to use the drag-and-drop design tool for both professionals and people like me who don't have the need (or knowledge required) to use more advanced graphic design software.
Getting root is considered the Holy Grail in the world of Linux exploitation. Much like SYSTEM on Windows, the root account provides full administrative access to the operating system. Sometimes even a successful exploit will only give a low-level shell; In that case, a technique called privilege escalation can be used to gain access to more powerful accounts and completely own the system.
One of the most critical bugs to come out in the last five years was Shellshock, a vulnerability which allows attackers to execute arbitrary code via the Unix Bash shell remotely. This vulnerability has been around for a while now, but due to the ubiquity of Unix machines connected to the web, Shellshock is still a very real threat, especially for unpatched systems.
Web application vulnerabilities are one of the most crucial points of consideration in any penetration test or security evaluation. While some security areas require a home network or computer for testing, creating a test website to learn web app security requires a slightly different approach. For a safe environment to learn about web app hacking, the OWASP Juice Shop can help.
When it comes to modding Android, there's no better tool than Team Win's TWRP custom recovery. You can use it to root your phone, flash mods like Magisk or Xposed, and even replace the entire operating system with a custom ROM like LineageOS — honestly, there's not much this utility can't do.
During its presentation at Unite Berlin, Magic Leap gave attendees a crash course in developing experiences for Magic Leap One (ML1), we found out quite a bit more about how the device works and what we can expect to experience with the device.
With Tasty dominating Facebook videos and online cooking flourishing, it can be cumbersome to keep track of all your recipes. Someone might send you something, and storing it in an app like Pocket is like jamming all your school papers in one folder — it just isn't practical. Fortunately, there's a better way to catalog your recipes so you can always have them on hand.
We need to take our privacy and security much more seriously. Whether it's malware-infected apps or the mishandling of our data by companies like Facebook, there are threats all around us in this digital world. Fortunately, some smartphones are simply designed to protect us better.
Don't think because your MacBook is using FileVault disk encryption your device is secure or immune to hackers. Here's how to find out if that FileVault password is strong enough to withstand an attack from a motivated attacker.
Google, Amazon, and Facebook are always listening. But what's worse? Hackers are listening, too. Windows PCs are particularly vulnerable, but with a few simple commands, a remote attacker can even take over the microphone on someone's Mac computer, streaming audio and listening to private conversations in real time without the victim's knowledge, abusing an overlooked security consideration.
It is often said that the best hackers remain unknown, and the greatest attacks are left undiscovered, but it's hard for an up-and-coming penetration tester or white hat to learn anything unless one of those factors is actually known or discovered. But the end goal here in our SQL injection lessons is to make that statement as true as possible for us when performing our hacks.
Earlier this year, we got our first taste of Android Pie in the form of Developer Preview 1. As with all past Android previews, DP1 was limited to Google devices — but at Google I/O 2018, Google announced that Developer Preview 2 would be accessible to other devices, including the Essential PH-1.
Hashes containing login passwords are transmitted between Windows computers on local Wi-Fi networks. By intercepting and decrypting these hashes using Responder and John the Ripper, respectively, we can learn a target's login credentials which can be later used to gain physical access to their computer.
With Gboard, Google created a keyboard with more functionality than just inputting words. The app includes features such as GIF search and live text translation, but it gets even better when you let it learn more about you. With this data, Gboard grows from a good keyboard to one that can complete your sentences.
Unless you own an Exynos model, there won't be much development on the custom ROM front for the Galaxy S9. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with all of the UI quirks from Samsung Experience (née TouchWiz). With a little work, you can give your S9 a stock Android makeover, even without root.
When you don't want somebody you're calling to know the real phone number associated with your iPhone, whether it's for privacy reasons, to avoid being called back, or to prevent being ignored, there are multiple things you can do to block it on their caller ID.
Sure, emojis are all the rage, but there's not an emoji for every emotion or feeling just yet. That's where emoticons come into play, emoji's older typographical sibling. Unfortunately, emoticons can be hard to type out, easy to forget, and ASCII art, in general, can be pretty time-consuming to create from scratch — but there's an easy way to forgo all these issues — make keyboard shortcuts.
As a developer, before you can make augmented-reality robots that move around in the real world, controlled by a user's finger, you first need to learn how to harness the basics of designing AR software for a touchscreen interface.
UPDATE April 4, 2019: We had high hopes for the ZTE Axon 9, but it won't be releasing in the United States. If you're in another area of the world, you can look into the ZTE Axon 9 Pro, but we cannot recommend this device to American readers due to carrier incompatibility. Below, we've saved the early rumored information on the Axon 9 for posterity.
Snapchat is in the midst of a massive redesign — one that not everyone loves. Still, it's clear that this is a decision fueled by money, and Snap Inc. believes this redesign will help attract more advertisers. Even so, Snapchat has a few more tricks up their sleeves to make a little extra dough. And while the average user couldn't care less about ads, they very easily could care about custom Filters and Lenses.
As the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, Apple devices are a constant target for hackers everywhere. While iOS has seen fewer common vulnerabilities and exploits (CVEs) in recent years, iPhones still aren't hack-proof. Fortunately, you can strengthen your security with the help of a few apps.
Starting your morning right is an essential first step to a productive day. Whether you're running late, rushing to catch up on the day's news, or lagging behind with early emails, little hiccups like these can have a trickle-down effect and ultimately ruin your day. Like with many problems, though, your smartphone can help.
One of Apple's best products is iMessage, which allows for quick, creative, and free messaging between iOS and Mac devices. However, users are reporting that conversation threads in the Messages app are occasionally out of order, which is equal parts confusing and annoying. Luckily, we have some ideas on how to fix the problem.
Many people think antivirus apps are useless — why pay a subscription fee when most malware can be avoided with common sense? But the thing is, there were an estimated 3.5 million malicious Android apps discovered last year, with many of them making their way onto the Play Store. As this number continues to rise, can you truly depend on common sense to protect you?
Any internet user will need to download files eventually, and most simply have faith that what they are downloading is trustworthy. This doesn't give much clarity into the contents of the file, but if the file's author published the original checksum, comparing it to the SHA-256 hash of the downloaded file can ensure nothing was tampered with.
Root, TWRP, Xposed, Magisk, custom ROMs — before you can have any of these, the first thing you should do is unlock your bootloader. Thankfully, the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are some of the most modder-friendly phones out there, so you only need to send a single fastboot command to unlock the bootloader.
As smartphone users, we live in dangerous times. The value of phones continues to rise, making them prime targets for thieves. In 2015, the FCC estimated that one million phones are stolen each year, and with several devices starting to hit the $1,000 mark now, these numbers are sure to rise. But what do you do if you fall victim to phone theft?
With the recent launch of the LG V30 and the Pixel 2 XL, LG has reintroduced the world to POLED. This display tech was showcased at CES 2015 and billed as a rival to Samsung's AMOLED displays, then promptly disappeared from the market for two years. But now that two of the biggest flagship phones this year are using the technology, many folks will be wondering what makes POLED different.
Update 10/23: The hits just keep on coming. We're now seeing reports of a "smearing" effect when scrolling through apps on the Pixel XL 2. We'll expand on that at the bottom of this article, but it's still worth reading the background information on issues with LG's new POLED displays.
Thanks to ever more powerful smartphones — the iPhone X with its advanced A11 processor and the Galaxy Note 8 powered by Snapdragon's 835 come to mind — the mobile industry is fast closing in on consoles and PCs with regards to gaming. Game developers have been aware of this fact, and have ported many games once dedicated to computers onto our handheld devices.
In 2013, Offensive Security released Kali Linux, a rebuild of BackTrack Linux derived from Debian. Since then, Kali has gone on to become somewhat of a standard for penetration testing. It comes preconfigured with a collection of tools accessible by a menu system, tied together with the Gnome desktop environment. However, Kali Linux isn't the only penetration-testing distribution available.
Apple demonstrated their continued interest and investment into the awesome world of augmented reality during their Sept. 12 event, highlighting a few new AR games that will appear on iPhones thanks to ARKit. But that's not all you can expect — as long as you have an iPhone with an A9 chip or later, there will be a ton of cool new AR tools, games, and other apps to play around from the App Store.
Cross-compilation allows you to develop for one platform (like Kali) and compile to run on a different platform (such as Windows). For developers, it means that they can work on their platform of choice and compile their code for their target platform. For hackers, it means we can compile exploit code for Windows from Kali.
Cruise Automation, the driverless car startup General Motors (GM) bought for $1 billion in 2016, is readying a formidable fleet of robo-taxis for rollout in cities throughout the US. But when it comes to details about how the company plans to realize these lofty goals, it's been fairly tight-lipped.
The Google Assistant is an incredibly useful tool that's now available for both Android and iOS. You can use plain English to send voice commands that range from turning off your smart lights to answering almost any question — but many of these features won't work properly if you have certain Google activity controls disabled.
Mobile augmented reality developer Blippar has updated its mobile app for iOS and Android with an augmented reality face profiles feature based on the company's real-time facial recognition engine.
When you first set up an iPhone, you'll be prompted to create a six-digit passcode to unlock your screen and access certain system settings. If you skip this step, you can always go back and create one, which we highly recommend. Without a passcode, everything on your iPhone is accessible by anyone who gets their hands on it — nosey friends, hackers, thieves, local law enforcement, the FBI — and you don't want that, do you?
