In our previous article, we learned how to take advantage of a feature, Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), to run malicious code when an MS Word document is opened. Because Microsoft built DDE into all of its Office products as a way to transfer data one time or continuously between applications, we can do the same thing in Excel to create a spreadsheet that runs malicious code when opened. The best part is, it will do so without requiring macros to be enabled.
After numerous scandals like the Equifax data breach and the 2016 US election, cybersecurity has become a significant issue for Americans. Unfortunately, anytime we use our devices, we're open to a cyber attack — especially when we browse the web. However, there are ways that we can make it harder for hackers and data miners.
Andre was enjoying the carefree life of a 12-year-old with his friends, riding his bike and playing sports, like all kids that age. Schoolwork wasn't hard for him, and his grades showed that.
It's no secret that devices leak data, but sometimes they do so in ways you may not expect. Your phone, laptop, printer, and IOT devices leak Wi-Fi information that can (and is) used to track you.
While the USB Rubber Ducky is well known by hackers as a tool for quick in-person keystroke injection attacks, one of the original uses for it was automation. In this guide, I'll be going the latter, explaining how we can use it to automate Wi-Fi handshake harvesting on the Raspberry Pi without using a screen or any other input.
There are all kinds of theories—many supported by science—about what causes Alzheimer's disease. Tangles of protein called ß-amyloid (pronounced beta amyloid) plaques are prominently on the list of possible causes or, at least, contributors. An emerging theory of the disease suggests that those plaques aren't the problem, but are actually our brains' defenders. They show up to help fight an infection, and decades later, they become the problem.
Whether you're riding the subway on your way home from work, or stuck in the backseat of the car on a long road trip, there are times when you need to entertain yourself without a mobile data connection. A good mobile game would pass the time perfectly, but not every game works without an internet connection.
Greetings my fellow aspiring hackers, It's still Christmas and we have a lot of things and hugs and kisses and ... to share ( you know the things that you do ). I have never done this before but I just felt to encourage you on the quest for knowledge, security and defence, skills and a whole lot more that comes out as a result of pursuing hacking. What we mean by hacking on this forum is White hat Hacking and OTW has great articles on it and I don't need to explain myself on that one.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Over the years, we have examined multiple ways to own, exploit, or compromise a system. On the other hand, we have not spent a lot of time on denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
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.
Probably SSH is not as clean and fast as other useful tools like netcat, but it has some features which are very useful, and when you'll need them, here's how to behave with that huge amount of computers all over your house.
Each day, we read about another security breach somewhere in our digital world. It has become so commonplace that we hardly react anymore. Target, J.P. Morgan, iCloud, Home Depot, and the list goes on and on.
If you've been to a farmer's market during tomato season, chances are you know that heirloom tomatoes are pricier (and funnier-looking) than their hybrid counterparts.
Many of my aspiring hackers have written to me asking the same thing. "What skills do I need to be a good hacker?"
Even as someone with super pale skin that burns instead of tanning, I don't use sunscreen nearly as often as I should. Or, uh...ever. My skin cancer prevention routine mostly involves hiding from the sun as much as humanly possible. If you're like me and hate the greasy feeling of sunscreen, there are other ways you can protect your skin by increasing your sun tolerance. Your diet actually has a lot to do with how easily you burn, so by getting enough of a few key nutrients, you can decrease ...
SCRABBLE. To some it's just a game, but to me it's life or death. Well, not really, but it feels that way anyway. On a normal weekend, a game becomes much like Jon Thomas' "friendly game of death Scrabble."
It's already been a banner year for mergers and acquisitions in the augmented reality industry, with WaveOptics and Ubiquity6 among the notable companies acquired. Two of the more active M&A players, Snap and Epic Games, continued their respective buying sprees this week with major deals supporting their AR strategies.
The COVID-19 pandemic has practically shut down all sports except for World Wrestling Entertainment, which has continued staging matches without an audience, leaving us sports fans with nothing much to cheer for. While they can't replace live games, smartphone games provide an alternate reality to live out our competitive entertainment in the absence of the real thing.
The year 2019 was filled with all the normal peaks and valleys of the tech business cycle, but this year was particularly important in a space as relatively young as the augmented reality industry.
The tactic of brute-forcing a login, i.e., trying many passwords very quickly until the correct one is discovered, can be easy for services like SSH or Telnet. For something like a website login page, we must identify different elements of the page first. Thanks to a Python tool for brute-forcing websites called Hatch, this process has been simplified to the point that even a beginner can try it.
Russian cyber disinformation campaigns have many missions, but one of particular interest is using technology to monitor, influence, and disrupt online communications surrounding culturally sensitive topics or protests. The ability to watch these events, and even filter positive or negative tweets to amplify, gives rise to the ability to execute a number of disinformation campaigns.
Hacking Wi-Fi is a lot easier than most people think, but the ways of doing so are clustered around a few common techniques most hackers use. With a few simple actions, the average user can go a long way toward defending against the five most common methods of Wi-Fi hacking, which include password cracking, social engineering, WPS attacks, remote access, and rogue access points.
The easiest way around a security policy is to find users who don't follow it. The Have I Been Pwned database identifies accounts with information breached by major third parties like Yahoo and LinkedIn. With Maltego, hackers can locate breached accounts created using company email addresses, potentially giving attackers access to a company account if the employee reuses a compromised password.
Facebook really wants your phone number, nagging you for one as soon as you join. This isn't all bad since it can help secure your account with two-factor authentication. On the flipside, this makes it easy to reveal the private phone numbers of virtually anyone on Facebook, including celebrities and politicians. We're going to look at how a hacker would do this and how to protect yourself.
Now that smartphones have ensured that we're connected to the internet 24/7, online privacy has become more important than ever. With data-mining apps hoping to sell your information for targeted ads, and government agencies only one subpoena away from knowing every detail of your private life, encryption has become our last line of defense.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Hacking has a long and storied history in the U.S. and around the world. It did not begin yesterday, or even at the advent of the 21st century, but rather dates back at least 40 years. Of course, once the internet migrated to commercial use in the 1990s, hacking went into hyperdrive.
I don't know how many of you had this experience in your youth, but when I was a kid, I used to actively think about what would happen if I suddenly woke up in a fantasy land, or were to pass through a portal into another space and time. I knew it wouldn't really happen, but when you're a kid, these can be important issues to you. So I slept with my glasses on every night, just in case. Photo from George Pal's The Time Machine.
First off, don't be frustrated. YOU CAN DO IT! Contrary to the message in the image above, it's NOT over. It's just beginning. And when it comes to solving the New York Times crossword puzzle, the old cliche does apply: practice makes perfect.
If you think you might be a likely target of a black-hat hacker, there's a new iOS security feature that offers extreme protection for your iPhone against spyware, phishing attempts, and other highly sophisticated cyberattacks.
Sure, Microsoft has mostly marketed its HoloLens headsets towards enterprises and developers, but we learned this week that, like every other tech giant, the company is working on a consumer-grade AR wearable. Speaking of consumer smartglasses, Apple made another strategic investment this week that has implications for Apple's AR future.
A lot of digital ink has been spilled heaping scorn on Magic Leap. Much of that media schadenfreude was due to what some believed were unmet promises versus some of the early hype around the product. Others just seemed to be rubbed the wrong way by the startup's Apple-esque secrecy and penchant for attempting to coin new terms and frameworks for things that were, mostly, already in play.
If it has an internet connection, it's got a huge attack surface for hackers. But what makes your phone even more dangerous is its portability and the collection of sensors it houses that can be just as good at tracking you as the camera and mic.
When you think about it, isn't life just one big open-world RPG just begging to be conquered? We all have a set number of specific tasks or chores we must complete every single day like clockwork. Sometimes, these items on our to-do list can become tedious and cause us to lose motivation. What if you could take those tasks and turn them into something awesome instead? Now you can.
It is almost indisputable that smartglasses and head-worn displays are the future of augmented reality. However, at this precise moment, they are still a very niche market.
After installing Ubuntu as your primary OS, you should have protected against USB Rubber Ducky payloads, defended against hard drive forensics, and reduced the overall attack surface against physical strikes. When defending against network-based attacks, you'll want to minimize hardware disclosures, prevent packet sniffers, harden firewall rules, and much more.
When the topic of Pokémon Go comes up, the typical response is, "Do people still play it?" The answer is a resounding yes!
The App Store has been around for almost 14 years now, and during that time, we must have seen over a million games come and go and stay and expand. But only a tiny fraction of those games have become blockbuster sensations because of the mighty App Store's reach on iPhone and iPad, and many of the first big hits are still alive today for you to relive the good ol' days of mobile gaming.
Samsung has a cool security feature built into One UI that has an interesting side effect, one that lets you have two separate copies of any Android app on your Galaxy phone. And that's not the only integrated Samsung tool for cloning apps.
One UI has an exciting privacy feature that lets you lock apps, photos, videos, and files on your Galaxy device behind Samsung's defense-grade Knox security platform. Only you can unlock it using a pattern, PIN, or passcode, or with biometrics like fingerprint and iris locks. It's like having a safe built right into your smartphone, and it couldn't be easier to set up.
The Metaverse, or AR cloud, has been a sci-fi dream for decades, but only recently have companies begun to actually develop the technology to build it. With its latest funding round, Epic Games is suddenly a front-runner in this pursuit.
