Hack Like a Pro: Linux Basics for the Aspiring Hacker, Part 11 (Apache Web Servers)
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers!
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers!
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In this series, we continue to examine digital forensics, both to develop your skills as a forensic investigator and to avoid the pitfalls of being tracked by a forensic investigator.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Digital forensics is one of the fields often overlooked by aspiring hackers. In a rush to exploit every and any system they can, they often ignore learning digital forensics—the field that may lead to them being traced.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! As I mentioned in earlier posts, the best hackers (or at least those not behind bars) have a keen understanding of digital forensics. If I am tasked to intrude upon an enemy's file server to retrieve war plans, such as in this tutorial, it is essential to my country's (and my own) well-being that it not be traced back to me. Understanding digital forensics helps us to leave without a trace and never have a trail back to us or our employer.
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! As you know by now, the Metasploit Framework is one of my favorite hacking tools. It is capable of embedding code into a remote system and controlling it, scanning systems for recon, and fuzzing systems to find buffer overflows. Plus, all of this can be integrated into Rapid7's excellent vulnerability scanner Nexpose.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Those of you who use Windows in a LAN environment understand that Windows machines can share directories, files, printers, etc. using "shares." This protocol dates back to the 1980s when the then dominant computer firm, IBM, developed a way for computers to communicate over the LAN by just using computer names rather than MAC or IP addresses.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Many of you have installed Kali Linux as a virtual machine (VM) using VMware or VirtualBox, while others have installed Kali (or BackTrack) in a dual-boot system. The drawback to installing these hacking systems as a VM is that it then requires an external wireless adapter (your wireless adapter is piped through the VM as a wired device, eth0), but it makes for a great place to test your hacks while honing your skills.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Domain Name System (DNS) is one of those things we seldom think about unless it doesn't work. Then, it can be very frustrating when we attempt to navigate to a website and we get that frustrating error message.
Welcome back, my hacker apprentices! I recently began a new series on digital forensics to show aspiring hackers what the forensic investigator can do and see while investigating a cyber attack. This is the second installment in that series and will focus upon network forensics. In other words, what can a network forensic investigator learn about the attacker during an investigation and how.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers!
Welcome, my neophyte hackers!
In my first tutorial on Linux basics, I discussed the importance of hackers using Linux and the structure of the directory system. We also looked briefly at the cd command. In this second Linux guide, I'll spend a bit more time with changing directories, listing directories, creating files and directories, and finally, getting help. Let's open up BackTrack and getting started learning more Linux for the aspiring hacker.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers!
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers!
Welcome back, my novice hackers!
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In many of my earlier tutorials, I mentioned the complementary nature of hacking and forensics. Both disciplines, hacking and forensics, benefit from a knowledge of the other. In many cases, both disciplines will use the same tool. In this tutorial, we will use another tool that can be used in either discipline—Sysinternals—a suite of tools developed by Mark Russinovich.
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! Metasploit is such a powerful tool that I can only scratch the surface of its capabilities here. As it has developed over the years, it is now possible to use Metasploit for nearly everything from recon to post exploitation to covering your tracks. Given its versatility, every aspiring hacker should have at least a tentative grasp of Metasploit.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! In this series, I am trying to develop your knowledge of digital forensics, which is valuable whether you're choosing a career in it or just want to know how your hacker activity can be traced. Few professional digital forensic investigators have a hacking background, but the best ones do.
Welcome back, my rookie hackers! In my ongoing attempts to familiarize aspiring hackers with Linux (nearly all hacking is done with Linux, and here's why every hacker should know and use it), I want to address a rather obscure, but powerful process. There is one super process that is called inetd or xinetd or rlinetd. I know, I know... that's confusing, but bear with me.
Welcome back, my novice hackers! In this continuing series on Metasploit basics, let's next look at a module that many aspiring hackers find useful—autopwn.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! One of those areas of Linux that Windows users invariably struggle with is the concept of "mounting" devices and drives. In the Windows world, drives and devices are automatically "mounted" without any user effort or knowledge. Well, maybe a bit of knowledge. Most Windows users know to unmount their flash drive before removing it, but they usually think of it as "ejecting" it.
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.
Welcome back, my budding hackers! In my continuing series on Linux basics for aspiring hackers, I now want to address Loadable kernel modules (LKMs), which are key to the Linux administrator because they provide us the capability to add functionality to the kernel without having to recompile the kernel. Things like video and other device drivers can now be added to the kernel without shutting down the system, recompiling, and rebooting.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! As mentioned several times in previous Linux tutorials, nearly everything in Linux is a file, and very often they are text files. For instance, all of the configuration files in Linux are text files. To reconfigure an application in Linux, we simply need to open the configuration file, change the text file, re-save, and then restart the application and our reconfiguration is applied.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! As expected with Null Byte's dramatic growth over the last year, we have added many new aspiring hackers who are still lacking in the basics of networking. In addition, with the new "White Hat" certifications coming out shortly, the exam will require some basic networking skills and knowledge to pass.
When using Linux, we often need to install new software, a script, or numerous large files. To make things easier on us, these files are usually compressed and combined together into a single file with a .tar extension, which makes them easier to download, since it's one smaller file.
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.
Welcome back, my fledgling hackers! Let's continue to expand our knowledge of digital forensics, to provide you the skills necessary to be a digital forensic analyst or investigator, as well make you a better hacker overall. In your attempts to enter a system or network undetected, it is key to understand what a skilled forensic investigator can learn about you, the alleged hacker.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! Although this article may have been better placed first in this series, I doubt that anyone would have read it when just starting out studying Linux. Now, that you are well into your Linux studies and have some familiarity with how it operates, I'd like to take this moment to explain the philosophy around the Linux operating system.
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.
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers!
Welcome back, my aspiring hackers! In previous tutorials, I have shown you how to scan the globe for vulnerable servers and write simple scripts in BASH and Perl to perform other reconnaissance tasks. In a very recent guide, I taught how to scan vulnerable servers for Heartbleed.
Welcome back, my hackers novitiates! As you read my various hacking tutorials, you're probably asking yourself, "What are the chances that this hack will be detected and that I'll land behind bars, disappointing my dear mother who already thinks I'm a loser?"
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! I've been writing these Linux tutorials in an attempt to fill the void in the education of some aspiring hackers into the Linux operating system. There is a lot to know, and in this tutorial, we'll look at Linux file permissions. Step 1: Checking Permissions
Before I start a series on remote exploitation, I think we should learn the basics of Perl. Perl, Ruby, C, C++, Cython and more are languages that some penetration testers just need to learn. Perl is a great language for multiple things, sadly, like many other scripting languages, it is limited by the environment in which it is designed to work in.
Welcome back, my budding hackers! In this series, I have been trying to familiarize you with the many features of the world's best framework for exploitation, hacking, and pentesting, Metasploit. There are so many features, and techniques for using those features, that few pentesters/hackers are aware of all of them.
Welcome back, my hacker novitiates! In the previous part of this series, we looked at how to use Metasploit's web delivery exploit to create a script to connect to a UNIX, Linux, or OS X machine using Python. Many members of the Null Byte community have asked me, "Can we do the same for a Windows systems?" The answer is YES!
Welcome back, my neophyte hackers! In previous tutorials, we learned how to steal system tokens that we could use to access resources, how to use hashdump to pull password hashes from a local system, and how to grab password hashes from a local system and crack them.
Welcome back, my tenderfoot hackers! Hacker newbies have an inordinate fixation on password cracking. They believe that cracking the password is the only way to gain access to the target account and its privileges. If what we really want is access to a system or other resources, sometimes we can get it without a password. Good examples of this are replay attacks and MitM attacks. Neither requires us to have passwords to have access to the user's resources.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers! In many cases when a computer, phone, or mobile device is seized for evidence, the system will have graphic images that might be used as evidence. Obviously, in some cases these graphic images may be the evidence such as in child pornography cases. In other situations, the graphic images may tell us something about where and when the suspect was somewhere specific.