News: The Cruel Crypto Game; How to Beat CryptoLocker Ransomware
It always looks different when it's not about you. The Internet is our world's Alterego. Those many bits don't really make sense unless we want them to be valuable, to mean something.
It always looks different when it's not about you. The Internet is our world's Alterego. Those many bits don't really make sense unless we want them to be valuable, to mean something.
Google Now is great for looking up movie times or finding your parking spot, but if you need to track down a file you downloaded, you're relegated to using a file explorer and, depending on your organizational skills, this can either be extremely easy or a huge pain in the ass. Unfortunately I land in the latter category, which is why I started using Fast Search by developer Mohamad Amin.
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! In an earlier Linux Basics tutorial, I had demonstrated the basics of the Apache web server. Since Apache is the world's most widely used web server on the Internet (as of July 2015, Apache was 38%, IIS was 26%, and Nginx is 15%), the more you know about it and understand it, the more success you are likely to have hacking it.
Slowly but surely, Microsoft is pushing more and more options out of the Control Panel and into a new menu simply called Settings. This new Settings menu debuted with Windows 8 and mainly focused on touchscreen-related options, but starting with Windows 10, you'll find quite a few general options residing here as well.
Malware often disguises itself inside of seemingly non-malicious files, such as installer packages, where it can then gain root access to your computer to track activity or steal your information.
Android Debug Bridge (or ADB for short) serves as a remote terminal interface for executing shell commands on any Android device. Put simply, ADB lets you send commands from your computer to your phone or tablet, some of which would require root access if they were performed on the Android side of the connection.
When Google announced its new Android TV platform, one of the features they advertised was a home screen that automatically reorganized your apps based on how frequently you used them. Unfortunately, this feature either didn't make the cut, or is still under development, since the home screen on the Nexus Player always remains static.
Welcome back, my amateur hackers! When you are using and administering Linux, it is important to be conversant in the use of the log files. As you know, log files are the repository for much information about our system, including errors and security alerts.
The majority of Android web browsers carry a "desktop mode" feature that makes mobile websites look like normal computer versions. Mobile versions are designed to work faster and more efficiently on smartphones, but sometimes the desktop version looks better on large displays or has additional features not included in the mobile one.
Battery life is extremely unpredictable on an Android. Finding the right ROM and kernel combo can make or break having the kind of battery that will last you all day long. Even if you do find the perfect pair, you then have to worry about apps, widgets, and other processes constantly waking your phone and draining your juice. While your media scanner isn't the biggest battery hog out there, it can definitely take a chunk out of it.
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.
Back in March, Samsung partnered with Slacker Radio to create a streaming service called Milk Music. For those of us who don't own a Galaxy device, this news was a non-starter, as it was exclusive to Samsung's flagship line of phones and tablets.
Welcome back, my nascent hackers! We have spent a lot of time in previous tutorials focused on hacking the ubiquitous Windows systems, but the vast majority of "heavy iron" around the world are Linux or Unix systems. Linux and Unix dominate the world of Internet web servers with over 60% of the market. In addition, Linux and Unix servers are the operating system of choice for major international corporations (including almost all the major banks) throughout the world.
Apple prides itself on simplicity, but the company makes downloading video and music files onto your iPad or iPhone an overly complicated process, requiring iTunes and/or iCloud.
While LG G3 users have been patiently waiting, developer the cubed and his Codefire team have been diligently working on a successful unlock method for the heavily locked-down bootloader. Now it's finally here, and the unlocking method is extremely easy to do—and it works for all G3 variants.
iCloud Drive is Apple's new solution to file management syncing across iOS and Mac OS X. If you've upgraded to iOS 8 and you have an iCloud account, you can use iCloud Drive to store files for certain apps. While you won't really be able to benefit with file syncing between iOS and Mac apps until you get Yosemite, you can still access your iCloud Drive documents online.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! Before we try to attack a website, it's worthwhile understanding the structure, directories, and files that the website uses. In this way, we can begin to map an attack strategy that will be most effective.
As a regular Mac OS X user, I have a love/hate relationship with the "Open With" contextual menu. Sometimes, it has just what I need. Other times, it's often packed with unnecessary or duplicate items, or missing the app I want to open the file up with the most.
Though they share the same name, the HTC One and OnePlus One have completely different sound quality. HTC had put a lot of time and effort into fine-tuning their BoomSound technology, while OnePlus is still fairly new to the game, with brand recognition being a much greater objective than awesome speakers.
Android's permissions system is simple, transparent, and straightforward. When installing an app, you get a chance to review all of the permissions that the app has requested. These can range from accessing your location data to holding a "wakelock" in order to prevent your phone from entering sleep mode. But your only choice in this matter is to accept all requested permissions, or not install the app.
The Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 (2013 edition) boast beautiful 1080p screens that are capable of displaying images and videos in ultra-sharp high definition. But for some strange reason, the YouTube app only allows for streaming of 720p content on these devices. It's not a limitation of YouTube for Android, since other devices support 1080p playback out of the box, and some, like the LG G3, even support higher resolutions.
The build.prop file in an Android device is home to many system-level values and settings. Everything from screen density to video recording quality is covered in this file, and people have been editing these entries to get new functionality and better performance since Android has existed.
If you're anything like me, you started down the Android-modding path for two distinct reasons; to run cutting-edge software and squeeze every bit of performance out of your hardware. Utilizing the new F2FS file system on your rooted Nexus 4 or 5 fulfills both of those desires at the same time.
With so many keyboard options available for Android, there's no reason to limit ourselves to the default one, or to just the ones available in the Amazon Appstore. While the Appstore does provide alternatives, such as SwiftKey, it doesn't come close to the selection available in the Google Play Store.
With Safestrap bringing custom recovery functionality to the AT&T and Verizon Wireless variants of the Samsung Galaxy S5, it's high time we covered this process for all other versions of the GS5.
Amazon released the Kindle Fire HDX back in late-2013, and if you picked one up or received one as a gift, you've probably had a good amount of time to get to know your tablet.
As I've explained before, black app backgrounds save you a bit of battery life on your Samsung Galaxy S5. This is because the AMOLED display on your S5 does not have to power pixels or a backlight for portions of the screen that are black.
It seems like every cloud service out there is offering tons of upgrade options and free promotions to give people as much space as they need to store their files online. I personally have over 100GB of Google Drive space which is shared between multiple computers, phones, and tablets, so keeping track of everything can be a huge pain in the ass.
Google's upcoming Android release hasn't even received a name or version number yet, but the third-party development community is already having its way with the firmware.
Sense 6 came with a ton of new features for the HTC One, but for some reason, HTC decided to keep one of them hidden to all non-Harman Kardon editions.
Thanks to a recent back-end update to Google's Search app, every KitKat-running device can use "Okay, Google" from within any app—even the lock screen. However, the default settings for the OnePlus One's mic leave it unable to detect your voice unless you have it right up to your face. That isn't a good look for anyone, but thankfully there is an easy fix to get this working correctly.
Google Play Music is one of the best cloud music services out there. Without ever paying a dime, you can upload as many as 20,000 songs to Google's servers, then use the app on your smartphone to stream these songs without taking up any of your storage space. And if you're willing to shell out $9.99 a month, you can even play songs from the massive All Access library.
The weather widget on the main home screen of a fresh-out-of-the-box Galaxy S5 is meant to show off the screen. Super-high contrast and crisp definition on the individual blades of grass in the background let you know that the phone you're holding has one helluva display.
In February of this year, the Higher Court of Berlin ruled that Facebook must follow strict German data protection laws, which Facebook's terms of services and privacy policies circumvent.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In recent tutorials, I have made reference to the name and location of the Linux devices in the file system, such as sda (first SATA or SCSI drive). Specifically, I have mentioned the way that Linux designates hard drives when making an image of a hard drive for forensic purposes.
When we look back on it, 2014 may be remembered as the Summer of Android Wear. With two new flagship smartwatches due out soon, Google's been readying its mobile OS for the wearables sector.
Recently, Sprint announced a partnership with Harman Kardon to deliver exclusive sound FX technology to their variant of the HTC One M8. The joint effort between the two companies is both to entice customers to switch to Sprint as well as improve the overall audio quality coming from the already extraordinary BoomSound speakers. But while this is great for new and existing Sprint customers, it does leave the rest of us out in the cold.
With apps and games getting bigger and more memory-hungry every year, storage space is at a premium. High-definition videos and photos of innumerable pixels certainly don't help the matter, either.
If you've just upgraded to an HTC One M8, chances are you've got some media files you want transferred over from your computer or previous phone. Even after you've done that, there will be times when you want to transfer content back to your computer for safe keeping.
With the release of the Samsung Galaxy S5 right around the corner, the first full system dump has been released by Sammobile. As the inevitable ports of functioning apps slowly begin to leak, today we've got a non-app aspect of the system and the one that tends to leak first—ringtones.