On April 7, 2017, residents in Dallas, Texas, woke to the sound of emergency sirens blaring all over the city. No one could shut them off, and after repeated efforts to contain the situation, the city had to shut down the entire system. While the media reported a sophisticated computer hack was responsible, the truth was much less high-tech.
The squiggly guys in this article's cover image are Propionibacterium acnes. These bacteria live in low-oxygen conditions at the base of hair follicles all over your body. They mind their own business, eating cellular debris and sebum, the oily stuff secreted by sebaceous glands that help keep things moisturized. Everybody has P. acnes bacteria—which are commonly blamed for causing acne—but researchers took a bigger view and discovered P. acnes may also play a part in keeping your skin clear.
Using extreme time-lapse microscopy, scientists watched a virus take over a bacteria to create a cell that looked and functioned more like a plant or animal cell. True story.
Next time you want to add plain ol' salt to your recipe, don't. Instead, use a delicious citrus herb salt, which will elevate the flavor of your dish more than salt by itself ever could.
Turning your oven on in the summer is just asking to convert your house into a sauna. No matter how badly you want to bake cookies during a heat wave, having to deal with the boost in temperature is a deterrent at best.
How is it goin', fellow 1337 haXX0rZ! dtm here with another article, this time, we'll be looking at infecting PE files, executables in particular for this write-up. Obviously some prerequisite knowledge will be needed since this isn't really newbie-friendly. If you are still a beginner, fear not, it might still be interesting to read! Hopefully!
Welcome back! Sorry for the dry spell, but I've been rather busy setting up some side projects! If you remember back to a few training sessions ago, we covered basic file I/O. This is a very important step in making our scripts applicable in a real life scenario, and today we're going to further these concepts.
I mentioned in one of my earlier articles something about ghost hackers, and very shortly stated a thing or two of what they do.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! Over the years, I have written many articles here on Null Byte chronicling the many the hacks of the NSA, including the recent hack of the Juniper Networks VPN. (By the way, my speculation in that article has proven to be correct. The NSA did embed a backdoor on those devices.)
After seeing the title of this post from me, you might be thinking, "Why did The Joker made another post on a topic on which we already have a nice sticky post?"
Before I get ostracized by all of you whisky lovers who live and die by whisky served neat, let me say my piece.
Winter and the winter holidays in general are a time of joy, laughter, and love… but not for everyone. For some, the stress of preparing for parties, hosting family, traveling long distances in bad weather, and just keeping up with your daily routine can start to bring you down.
Hello everyone. I've recently made the annoucement of the Null Byte suite of tools, and we've covered how to download and install it. Now it's time we cover how to submit a tool for inclusion into the suite. It's relatively simple, but we need to get a few ground rules out of the way.
Well, first things firsts, it's been awhile! I'm sorry the series has been dead for a little bit, but I recently hit some personal relationship issues and needed to take some time to think. But, now that it's all said and done, the dust can settle and we can start training again!
In python, or any scripting language for that matter, there are certain things that you will carry with you throughout your entire scripting career. Some of the most basic things that you will keep with you are output, variables, and their value types. We'll start by going over output, then cover variables and their types. So, let's get started!
If you have a ton of photos and videos on your iPhone, backing up to iCloud is probably a no-go since it only provides 5 GB of free storage. Yes, you can buy more storage, but who wants to do that? And what happens if you run out of storage, stop backing up, and your phone gets lost, stolen, or damaged.
Amazon makes it exceptionally easy to purchase anything you want in just a few minutes. From textbooks for school to live ladybugs, its more surprising when you can't have something delivered to your doorstep in a few day's time.
One of the latest home-improvement gadgets out there today, smart lighting, has become more popular as prices come down. That being said, its still quite a penny to shell out. In this article, I'll go through a few of the top products out there today, including the Philips Hue, Belkin WeMo, and Lifx.
There's nothing more jarring than the sound of your morning alarm. Even hearing it on others' phones, hours after your own abrupt wakeup, can cause you to flinch in fear. Though we depend on that shrill sound to get up each morning, it's actually better to wake up naturally—so don't even think about hitting that snooze button.
Many modern Android devices use a display technology called AMOLED. These screens differ from traditional LCD displays in that each pixel emits its own light, so a backlight is not required. Even better, when rendering a black element on the screen, AMOLED displays simply don't light up the associated pixels, meaning virtually no power is used. Since black pixels use little to no power on an AMOLED screen, more black pixels means lower battery consumption.
We all carry a bit of anxiety around with us. Is our boss still annoyed because we could barely stay awake in yesterday's pre-dawn meeting? Will our friend hate us forever because we forgot to call them back two weeks ago? Whatever worries pop up in your mind, whether they're monumental or insignificant, it can be hard to quiet those nagging voices, but you can shut down your nonstop mind with a bit of relaxation, distraction, and action.
It seems like every day now that we see a new headline on a cyber security breach. These headlines usually involve millions of records being stolen from some large financial institution or retailer. What doesn't reach the headlines are the many individual breaches that happen millions of times a day, all over the world.
Fasting—or the practice of regularly abstaining from ingesting anything except water—is a pretty drastic move. I tried to fast for two days and made it to the 12-hour mark, which is when I broke down and ate a quart of ice cream.
Like Costco's price codes or the tags on your bread, the numerical codes printed on those sticky little fruit and vegetable labels can reveal a lot of information to us consumers. Once you understand the codes, you can look at that little label (also known as PLU, or "price look up" label) and know whether the produce you're about to buy or eat was treated with pesticides, genetically modified, both, or neither. Before we go any further with deciphering the codes on these labels, let's take a...
Spiders are common pests that typically prefer to live outdoors. However, insects and warmth will eventually attract them into our houses. They like to spin their webs in corners, crevices and unused areas of your house. Most species are harmless and even act as a natural repellent for getting rid of other insects. However, in some cases, spiders can be very dangerous. Whichever the case may be, they are scary and people are always looking for natural ways to get rid of them.
In one of my previous articles, I showed off how to make water freeze into ice instantaneously. In this article, I'd like to elaborate on this, and show how a glass of water can turn to ice instantly on command. What exactly is this supernatural power? Discover the secrets to ice-bending—in real life.
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! Many of you have written me that you're having difficulty installing and running Metasploit on a variety of platforms. No matter if you're using Mac, Linux, or Windows, I strongly recommend you install BackTrack as your secondary OS, a virtaulization system, or on an external drive. This particular Linux distribution has many hacking and security tools integrated—including Metasploit.
In a previous article, I demonstrated an Arc Welder made using parts from old microwave ovens. Video: .
Every Windows system includes command prompt; and while a lot of people on Null Byte and WonderHowTo in general know how to use it, some people don't know anything about it, even how to access it.
Google Reader is soon to be no more. Yesterday, the company announced that the service will be shutting down as of July 1, 2013, as part of Google's second "Spring Cleaning."
With this article, I'll be continuing the series I started with my recent plague doctor article. That is, examining tropes that may at first appear to not fit into Steampunk.
Not that long ago I wrote an article discussing what it would be like, realistically, if you were to accidentally travel back in time to the Victorian era. At the end of that article, I mentioned that the best thing you could bring with you on a time-traveling adventure is a Kindle, or similar e-reader, stuffed full of the knowledge of the 21st century. Why a Kindle? Well, I own a Kindle, and I love it. However, there's far more to it than that.
Once you have the skills to bring your ideas to life, the hardest part is coming up with ideas. What do you do when you can't think of something to make? What happens when your well of inspiration runs dry?
All kinds of people pretend to be someone they're not on the internet, including scammers, people attempting to wind others up, hackers and web predators. Almost all of these people will leave bases uncovered and they're all easy to expose when you understand how to. Here are my favorite ways of finding out when somebody is lying quickly. Image Search
WonderHowTo is a how-to website made up of niche communities called Worlds, with topics ranging from Minecraft to science experiments to Scrabble and everything in-between. Check in every Wednesday evening for a roundup of user-run activities and how-to projects from the communities. But don't wait—start submitting your own projects to the most appropriate World now!
If you like to shop online then it is extremely helpful to have a PayPal account to safely make your online purchases. Help reduce your risk of identity theft by using protected methods like PayPal when your credit card information is involved.
Are you a secret shopper? Well, you could be in Wizard 101. You have to earn the Secret Shopper badge to be one, and if you don't know how, you're in luck.
Cheat Engine on Wizard101? Yes. You can easily hack Wizard101 with Cheat Engine. It's just like all of those Facebook flash games and can be hacked just the same.
In this video series, survival skills expert Mike Myers explores how to survive in the desert. Learn basic desert survival tips such as: how to prepare for the wilderness, how to find a campsite, how to use a map and a compass, how to kill and eat a rattlesnake, how to treat a snake bite, what to do if your lost in the desert, how to filter water, and how much water is needed to survive in the desert.
Every little girl at one time or another thinks of being a ballerina. The beauty, the grace, the presence. It is a gorgeous art form that deserves respect. This video series will explore some of the beginning facets to ballet dancing and address some of the most important things you need to know as you begin your dancing journey.
