Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! So many readers in the Null Byte community have been asking me questions about evading detection and hacking undetected that I decided to start a new series on digital forensics.
The infamous Red Ring of Death plagued the Xbox 360 for years, leading people like me over to the PlayStation 3 console. Now it looks like Sony and its new PlayStation 4 are running into the same problems as Microsoft did.
Unless you like paying exorbitant prices for out-of-contract phones, most of us are stuck with the one we already have for two or more years. The tech industry moves fast, and as new phones are released seemingly every month, your Samsung Galaxy S4 might start looking older by the week.
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! Many newbie hackers focus upon the technical aspects of hacking and fail to give enough attention to social engineering. In fact, I would say that technical hacks should ONLY be attempted if social engineering attacks fail. Why bother spending hours or days trying to hack a password if someone will simply give it to you?
How much privacy are you getting as an AT&T customer? With the recent leaks confirming the National Security Agency's surveillance on AT&T users, and the ongoing trial of Jewel v. NSA, it seems not much at all.
The new Samsung Galaxy S4 may be the only phone to include temperature and humidity sensors, but your Galaxy Note 2 has a few weather-detecting features of its own.
If you watched Samsung's Unpacked 2013 live last month, where they announced the new Galaxy S4, you probably sat through this awkward skit: This was Samsung's way of introducing their new translation software, dubbed S Translator. In the skit, the backbacking American traveler in Shanghai typed his question in English, and the phone spoke it aloud in Chinese. The other man replied in Chinese, and the app translated the message back into English. Live conversation translation aside, the app ca...
Parking. Ugh. Parking is about as fun as running through a swarm of bees while being chased by a pack of wolves from The Grey.
A car is stolen every 33 seconds in the United States, and from that, the percentage of vehicles recovered in the first day is a whopping 52 percent. Over the next week, that number rises to around 79 percent, but after those initial seven days are up, it's unlikely the vehicle will be found.
A few weeks ago, Facebook published a blog post called "Proposed Updates to our Governing Documents," which outlines a few changes in their policies and user voting system. These changes would essentially take away users' right to vote on future changes to Facebook's data use policy while also taking away Facebook's responsibility to alert users of those changes. If the new policy is enacted, the vote will be replaced with "a system that leads to more meaningful feedback and engagement," what...
The newest firmware update for Android, Jelly Bean 4.1.1, has been out for a while now, but not every device has gotten it yet (some never will). One popular device that has recently gotten it is the Samsung Galaxy S III, only they'll be pushing the update out overseas during the next couple weeks, with the UK already seeing Jelly Bean from the cellular provider Three (if you're on Three, see how to update your device here). Unfortunately, stateside users will have to wait a bit longer. There...
As if you needed another reason to lock down your Facebook profile, the company's sketchy new partnership with data mining firm Datalogix is geared towards giving advertisers more information on what you're doing—even when you're not online. It's just not enough that they can target ads based on your preferences, now they want to know how those ads are influencing your buying habits in the real world.
UPDATE: A patch to fix the exploit has been released. Download it here.
There have been plenty of headlines recently about fake followers in both politics and entertainment. Everyone gets hit by a spam account here and there, but when a large percentage of someone's followers are fake, it can look pretty bad, especially with influential people being accused of buying their followers to look more popular.
If you've read anything in the news about Skype recently, it probably hasn't been good. First, there was the controversy over the company listening to and recording users' conversations. Now, there's a new spam tool for Skype that can harvest usernames, see whether or not you're online, and even parse your log files. Image by Lloyd Dewolf
Considering how often many of us fly on commercial airlines, the idea that a hacker could somehow interfere with the plane is a very scary thought. It doesn't help to learn that at Defcon, a researcher found that the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B), transmissions that planes use to communicate with airport towers are both unencrypted and unauthenticated.
If you use Ubisoft's uPlay browser extension, you should probably get rid of it right now. An Information Security Engineer at Google discovered that the plugin has a hole in it that allows programs to be installed through uPlay, essentially letting anyone who feels so inclined to take over your computer. How the Exploit Works
With a little bit of planning, you can avoid a lot of blood-pressure-raising traffic messes. You Will Need
The year was 1947. Scientists had isolated a virus from a pyrexial rhesus monkey in Uganda and named it after the forest where the monkey lived — Zika.
Does your car idle high and make an obnoxious racket every time you are stopped at a light, drawing dispproving looks from your fellow motorists? If you are into home car maintenance, you may be able to diagnose the cause of this problem yourself. This video illustrates how to test for one common problem that leads to a high idle, a faulty throttle position sensor, the contacts on which have been worn down by the throttle. You will need an analog multimeter to test the ohm load from the senso...
The Apple rumor drumbeat is getting louder: a wearable augmented reality device is almost certainly coming, very soon.
Snapchat parent company Snap may finally be taking the big step into the fully-functioning augmented reality wearables realm with the next iteration of its Spectacles devices.
If you do a lot of typing every day — writing reports, essays, emails, and whatnot — we can guarantee your day would be improved by taking less time to do it. Thankfully, we've found a super-smart AI-powered tool that will do just that, and right now, you can get an amazing 52% off a Lightkey Pro Text Prediction Software: Lifetime Subscription for the sale price of just $79.99 (regular price $169).
Nowadays, even the dumbest thieves know that the first thing you should do after you steal a phone is turn on airplane mode. Not only does this make it harder for police to track the phone through cell tower triangulation, but it also disables security features the person you stole it from may have implemented — for instance, Samsung's Find My Mobile service.
If you're a man and subscribe to podcasts or YouTube channels that cater to masculine interests, then you've almost certainly encountered sponsorships from Manscaped. And that means I don't have to explain what the company is selling you (for the uninitiated, it's a company dedicated to helping you trim your body hair—most notably, your nether regions, in addition to other areas).
No website, service, or platform is immune to being abused or exploited by hackers, and Google Analytics is no exception. To better understand how Google Analytics can help deliver payloads and bypass security protocols, one might want to learn how to use Google Analytics from a user's perspective first.
For Android smartphones, the latest craze is high refresh rate displays, and many popular flagships have them. But until now, there has been no way to confirm it is, in fact, running at higher hertz besides a menu option. Android 11 changes this.
Last week, I updated VirtualBox on my computer since I had skipped a few versions, then I could no longer copy text or paste text from my Kali virtual machine to my host OS and vice versa. Installing the Guest Additions didn't seem to do anything, and the bidirectional shared clipboard was enabled, but there was one thing that did work for me that may help you out too if you experience the issue.
Apple just released the first developer beta for iOS 13.4.5 on Tuesday, March 31. The update follows the previous week's stable release of iOS 13.4.
If you're as addicted to TikTok as much as I am, you probably heard about the app's alleged, hidden views counter, which can show you how many TikToks you've watched on your account. Most people who look at their counters are horrified to see that they've watched hundreds of millions of TikToks so far. Can that be right?
The "what (blank) are you" augmented reality filters on Instagram have become so popular that more and more Hollywood giants are following the augmented reality-powered social media meme train, with the latest example coming via Snapchat.
It's time to make some more room at the augmented reality cosmetics counter. This week, social media giant Pinterest unveiled "Try On," a virtual make-up visualization tool running on its Lens visual search tool.
There are phones nowadays with 12 gigs of RAM, but they'll cost you well over a grand. The majority of Android devices have much less memory — I'd wager most have less than 4 GB. And with the system taking up around 2 GB, that leaves user-installed apps little room to breathe.
Beta testing on iOS is as Wild West as Apple gets. From feature-filled to featureless releases, there's a high level of unpredictability for what to expect. And not everything is found right away. For instance, last week's developer beta 2 added a new feature that was left undiscovered until three days later. So what has Apple hidden in today's iOS 13.3.1 dev beta 3 update?
People fundamentally distrust magicians. And they should. The illusions they proffer are just that, illusions meant to astound rather than tangible interactions and results that have weight and meaning in our real world. Our lizard brains know this, and, no matter what the outstanding feat of "magic" presented, we nevertheless hold fast to our survival-based grip on the truth: we just saw simply "can't be real."
Samsung, like other OEMs, partners with third-party companies to include their apps on Galaxy devices. For example, Microsoft pays Samsung millions to pre-install certain Office apps. But one of these partners might not be on the up and up.
When filtered through the prism of the top stories of the year, the business of augmented reality 2019 was defined as much by epic failures of AR startups as it was by the promising developments that propelled the industry forward into 2020.
We all want to be healthy, but in practice, it can be tricky, especially from the fitness angle. Our lives seem busier and busier, which makes hitting the gym quite the challenge. What if we told you there was a real way to work on your fitness in the comfort of your own home — in just seven minutes a day? All you need is a chair, a wall, and a 7-minute workout app.
One Instagram creator's augmented reality homage to Disney's deep bench of animated characters has earned him fifteen minutes of fame.
There are plenty of jokes out there about the battery indicator on iPhones. Some people complain about their iPhones dying randomly at 11%, while others see hours of use at the 1% mark. Despite its inconsistencies, that battery percentage is a useful tell for how desperate you need a charger. There's just one problem: the icon is hiding on your iPhone 11, 11 Pro, or 11 Pro Max.
