Back when I was a Windows user, I know I'm not the only one who has experienced password loss—that moment where you just can't remember your password. Sometimes it happens to the best of us. So, how can we get into the system without paying a local geek or geeksquad to do it? First, we have to look into how Windows stores their passwords.
To the displeasure of many loyal Firefox users, Mozilla has been deploying what seems like a new marketing strategy to "catch up" to Google Chrome. I have no idea if this is because the version number is higher than theirs, but it is downright annoying. It's not all complaints, though. Firefox has done an amazing job at completely revamping its source code and redesigning all of its engines, making it a more than worthy competitor to Chrome. However, we are displeased with Firefox because eve...
As we all know, security is a big thing here in Null Byte. We've talked quite a bit about ways to encrypt traffic and become anonymous on the internet, some of which entail using proxies, VPNs, and SSH tunnels. We've also talked about preference using SSL pages in practice for safe logins. These are all great protocols and tools, but aren't without their flaws and inconveniences.
This is the Windows OS counterpart to my tutorial on how to burn the new XDG3 formatted games on Xbox 360. Microsoft invented a new disc format system to trump piracy, it's called XDG3. XDG3's standard is to burn a whole extra gigabyte of data to the disc, to allow more content, but more importantly for stopping piracy. This extra gigabyte of data makes it impossible to burn or rip a game the traditional way. So how on earth can we burn our fully-legal back-ups that we should rightfully be ab...
This is Null Byte's fourth part in a series about fully securing our computers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). In our last Null Byte, we went over how to encrypt an entire operating system to protect our data, however, this doesn't fully protect us. In the case of legal extortion, the government can actually make you give up your cryptographic key to your computer so that they can look through it.
"How do I install Arch Linux?" That question was bound to come up eventually. And with me using Arch, it's no coincidence that all of you want to use it as well. Arch is arguably the best Linux distro available. Distros that come close are Gentoo and some aspects of Ubuntu, but Arch is meant for building your OS from the inside out. Arch is built around minimalism, so you won't get anything by default. It doesn't even come with sound!
Games have been getting shorter in length over the last decade. RPGs like The Elder Scrolls series are still tremendously long, but most single-player game experiences have gotten shorter as production values, costs, and manpower requirements to create them have gone up. It seems that elite Japanese developers Level-5 and Brownie Brown have decided to completely disregard that trend for their forthcoming collaborative effort Professor Layton and the Last Specter, which will feature what might...
Giveaway Tuesdays has officially ended! But don't sweat it, WonderHowTo has another World that's taken its place. Every Tuesday, Phone Snap! invites you to show off your cell phone photography skills.
Could the world really be coming to an end tomorrow? Presuming you believe the biblical prediction from 89-year-old Harold Camping, May 21st, 2011 is undeniably Judgment Day. If you have confidence in that prophecy, you're probably not even reading this because you're too busy either A) preparing for the Rapture or B) sitting in your backyard bunker hoping to outwit annihilationism.
Type: Digital, Landscapes Theme: Incredible Landscapes, "Beyond the Mundane"
Type: Digital, avian Theme: Bird portraits, "The Avian Persona", wild or in captivity
Type: Digital and traditional photography Theme: Wildlife
If you're an owner of a BlackBerry smartphone, chances are you're going to want to use BBM, which for all of you newbie BlackBerry owners, stands for BlackBerry Messenger. BBM is an instant messaging application developed solely for BlackBerry device owners.
If you've been wondering why you're so unlucky, maybe it's because you haven't been following the New Year's Day tradition like everyone else in the world. So, if you want your luck to change in 2011, you better grab the black-eyed peas and make some Hoppin' John!
This method is easy, intuitive and requires very little math. You will need:
Make this Valentine's Day one to remember! Well... because you forgot. But don't worry, you can still make that heart pitter-patter for your love by saving face and getting some last minute Valentine gift ideas on the cheap. There's no reason to shop at Hallmark or buy expensive jewelery—just use your heartwarming ingenuity to make those cheeks blush.
Did you know that you can use Gmail to make free phone calls to anywhere in North America? We're not talking computer to computer, but actual free phone calls to cell phones and home phones. All you need is a Gmail account, a microphone, and speakers plugged into your computer.
Summary
We had a blast during last week's social engineering calls. One of our attending social engineers was so clever that she convinced several people on Craigslist that lost items were hers, even if it seemed she couldn't be trusted. But females are better social engineers, naturally. Some say that females have a special knack for manipulating men, but I think that's preposterous. I can't see why that would be true in a million years (note my sarcasm).
Law enforcement can make a lot of folks cringe. Too often do we hear on the news, and even experience in our own lives, the unjust way that an unacceptable portion of law enforcement treat the very citizens they are supposed to protect. People's rights are violate each and every day by law enforcement, simply because they are timid and uneducated with the laws of society. This dirty trickery shouldn't be played on harmless citizens under any circumstances.
When it comes to webcams these days, most people are using their laptops over desktops. The cameras are centered, integrated, and require no configuring. They're a cinch and usually have great resolution. So, then what do we do with all of those old wired desktop webcams that we've accrued over the years? Even if you still use an external USB one, chances are you're not using it daily, so why not come up with a better use for it?
Lost the product key for your game? If you have to reinstall the game and don't have that key anymore, you're out of luck, especially if you didn't "buy" the game. But never be in fear of losing product keys again with today's Null Byte, where we'll be practicing a little bit of mind-kung fu.
Lock picking is defined by locksmiths as "the art of opening a lock without the key". There's many ways to accomplish this, but I'm specifically interested in using a lock pick set. Since locks vary in shapes and size, it's better to stick with just one kind of lock at first. Most locks are based on fairly similar concepts, so sharing methods across locks is possible.
Technology in computers these days are very favorable to the semi-knowledgeable hacker. We have TOR for anonymity online, we have SSDs to protect and securely delete our data—we can even boot an OS from a thumb drive or SD card. With a little tunneling and MAC spoofing, a decent hacker can easily go undetected and even make it look like someone else did the hack job.
Following the first part in this series on advanced cracking techniques, we are going to go over how we can intelligently crack passwords using the old-fashioned bruteforce method. These unique cracking techniques aren't widely used, because most crackers are Script Kiddies who have no idea what the concepts are behind cracking passwords, thus, word won't get around too quickly.
Here's a nasty little Null Byte. An open redirect vulnerability was found in both Facebook and Google that could allow hackers to steal user credentials via phishing. This also potentially allows redirects to malicious sites that exploit other vulnerabilities in your OS or browser. This could even get your computer flooded with spam, and these holes have been known about for over a month.
I'm pretty sure that it's a universal dream for everyone in the world to retire early. Who wants to to be stuck with the rest of the country and retire when you're almost 70 years old? You heard me right, 70! Most people can't go out and do the things they love to do by the time they're 70, unless they've been practicing good health and exercise their entire life.
As per Alex's request, I am posting about generating word-lists in Python. However, this is my FIRST attempt with Python, so please provide me with critiques and any and all comments. I really want to know what you think as there was a little bump here and there seeing as I am transitioning from C#.
Today's tutorial will teach you how to erase data permanently so that it cannot be recovered. Many believe that having a file shredder on the computer means you are up to no good.
VNC is a great protocol that you can use on Windows and Linux machines to remotely control computers. This is useful if you need to control your computer when away from home, help your grandma check her email, or help a client with a disk cleanup. VNC is secure in the sense that it requires authentication in order to make the connection, but after that, the data is sent over the internet unencrypted. This means that an attacker could sniff your traffic and snoop everything that's going on. Th...
If you've ever wondered how software pirates can take software and crack it time and time again, even with security in place, this small series is for you. Even with today's most advanced methods of defeating piracy in place, it is still relatively easy to crack almost any program in the world. This is mainly due to computer processes' ability to be completely manipulated by an assembly debugger. Using this, you can completely bypass the registration process by making it skip the application'...
With the purchase of my latest computer, installing Linux turned into a nightmare from Hell. The graphics drivers are probably the biggest issue that anyone with a newer computer will run into when installing Linux. AMD and NVIDIA are the dominant ones on the market, both of which have awful support.
Paying for web hosting isn't ideal in most situations. If you have your own website, hosting it yourself is very acceptable and easy to do, assuming your internet bandwidth permits. Most people want to run a personal site, nothing crazy, so hosting from home on low-bandwidth internet is actually a better solution in most cases.
Windows 8 Beta (Developer Preview) It wasn't that long ago Windows 7 was released - now Windows 8 Beta is here. I did do a Google search to see when the stable version will be out but wasn't able to find an official statement from Microsoft. However - I saw several articles on Google hinting that the final release might be in August or there about.
Having bills to pay is one of the worst parts of life, especially around the holidays. And if you're extremely unlucky, you might also have to pay some hefty medical bills. This can put a heavy damper on plans, wants and needs. What's worse? The people that you owe money to are pushy and always bother you to pay in a more timely fashion, or worse, pay bigger premiums.
Shortening URLs has become a necessity in this age of Twitter and limited-character status updates. It not only allows us to cram more words into our oh-so-important Twitter statuses, but it also helps us with a few other things.
Having an SSH or Secure SHell to tunnel your traffic through is something we have talked about many times at Null Byte. As we know, it allows us to securely route and encrypt our traffic through a remote server, effectively anonymizing us and protecting our traffic from all forms of analysis—simultaneously. We have gone over how to make a home SSH tunnel. However, the question has come up, "How can I get an SSH tunnel to somewhere other than my computer?" This would be useful in a situation w...
Flash memory can be a tad unpredictable at times. I have had 4 flash drives die out on me over the last few years, and they usually die without warning. When a flash memory based device dies, the data is likely impossible to recover. Adversely on an HDD, or Hard Drive Disk, even if the disk dies out, someone will probably be able to fix it and get it back to working order—at least long enough for you to back up your data. Hard drives are a bit more forgiving. As you can guess, due to the unpr...
Skype is a great service. It allows a free solution for VoIP to VoIP calls, and cheap VoIP to landline calling. However, a very disturbing, little known fact that might push you away from Skype does exist. If you closely read the terms of service agreement, it clearly says that Skype is allowed to decrypt your messages whenever they please. Here at Null Byte, we tend to enjoy our anonymity, don't we?
File Transfer Protocol, or FTP, is a network protocol made for transferring files in a client and host fashion over a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) network, such as the internet. FTP is integrated into most browsers, and you have probably used it before. It is a common way to host files and transfer them easily. To access an FTP, a login is required, unless the server is configured to use anonymous logins (like the Arch Linux mirrors).
