Configuring onion services for the first time can be tricky. A surprising number of system administrators make seemingly trivial mistakes that ultimately lead to catastrophic cases of de-anonymizing supposedly anonymous sites on the dark web. OnionScan is a tool designed to identify common misconfigurations in onion services and aid us in understanding how to fix them.
Update (February 2019): The methods below will help on older Android versions, but we've recently revisited this topic. So if you have a newer Android phone and you want to get rid of Google, head here.
Welcome back, my greenhorn hackers, and happy New Year! Now that your heads have recovered from your New Year's Eve regaling, I'd like to grab your attention for just a moment to preview 2015 here at Null Byte. I hope you will add your comments as to what you would like to see, and I'll try to honor as many requests as I can.
Every summer for the last 26 years, hoards of hackers have descended on the Las Vegas Strip for DEFCON, the biggest hacker conference in the US. There's a wealth of talks every season (DEFCON 27 has at least 95 scheduled), and there have been some essential topics to learn from in past discussions. We've dug through the last ten years and found the 15 most popular talks you should watch.
Conducting phishing campaigns and hosting Metasploit sessions from a trusted VPS is important to any professional security researcher, pentester, or white hat hacker. However, the options are quite limited since most providers have zero-tolerance policies for any kind of hacking, good or bad. After researching dozens of products, we came out with 5 potentials that are ideal for Null Byte readers.
Hackers can be notoriously difficult to buy gifts for, so we've curated a list of the top 20 most popular items Null Byte readers are buying during their ethical-hacking studies. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been dying to share this list with someone shopping for you, we've got you covered with our 2017 selection of hacker holiday gifts — just in time for Christmas.
The older I get, the more my Friday nights involve watching Netflix at home with a bottle of Maker's Mark and a box of Oreos. Netflix is a big part of my life, and I'm not alone. YouTube and Netflix make up over 50% of all activity on the Internet, so it might be worth your time to understand why Netflix seems to cause so many headaches and what can be done about it.
As was mentioned by the great OTW last week, TOR, aka The Onion Router, has had its integrity attacked by the NSA. In an attempt to reduce the anonymity granted by the service, the NSA has opened a great many nodes of their own. The purpose is presumably to trace the origin of a communication by compromising some entrance and exit nodes. Once both are compromised, it is much easier to correlate traffic with a particular individual.
Apple wants to support the advertising economy, but its primary focus of late has been user privacy and security. In Safari, cross-site tracking, which lets content providers track you across websites and apps to show you more targeted ads, is disabled by default. However, content providers can get around that using less privacy-invasive ad measurements, but you can stop that too in iOS 14.5.
Smartphones are inherently bad for privacy. You've basically got a tracking device in your pocket, pinging off cell towers and locking onto GPS satellites. All the while, tracking cookies, advertising IDs, and usage stats follow you around the internet.
For the uninitiated, it can be difficult to buy that special hacker in your life a perfect holiday gift. That's why we've taken out the guesswork and curated a list of the top 20 most popular items our readers are buying. Whether you're buying a gift for a friend or have been dying to share this list with someone shopping for you, we've got you covered with our 2018 selection of hacker holiday gifts.
If you need to hack an Android device, try a remote administration tool. Known more familiarly as a RAT, there are open-source RATs that are barebones and exorbitantly priced RATs that are more polished. There are also low-cost and polished RATs that aren't intended to be RATs at all, such as Cerberus, an anti-theft solution available right on Google Play.
Smartphones are still "phones," which means communicating with others is usually a primary use. Ranging from a simple "hi" to a more personal conversation and even sharing passwords, our messages should remain private so that only the intended recipient sees their content. While many apps tout end-to-end encryption, not all apps prioritize security and privacy.
Coinbase is the primary go-to for many users when it comes to investing in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP), and more, due to its user-friendly interface. But before you join them, know that the ease of use comes with a price. Coinbase charges fees for each transaction, and your bank might even add charges on top of that. Plus, there is some fine print to be aware of.
You might be giving out your name to every stranger you see, and you don't even know it. That iPhone of yours has a name — generally a combination of your first name and device model — and it broadcasts it to others via AirDrop, Personal Hotspot, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other connections. Sure, it's useful to keep your device name simple and to the point, but there are upsides to changing it.
Privacy and security go hand in hand, especially for smartphones. When it comes to privacy, you decide what personal information about yourself is out there to discover. Security, on the other hand, is all about enforcing those privacy decisions.
Privacy is a growing concern in the tech industry, but Apple has fallen behind many of its peers when it comes to email security. Fortunately, iOS 15 changes that. Your email address is the key to a vast amount of personal information, not to mention a stepping stone into your other online accounts, so it's great to see new features for iPhones that protect email accounts and their contents.
Adobe Audition, Audacity, and other audio editing software have tools to isolate vocals and instruments in regular songs so that you can get an instrumental track for karaoke, vocals for an a capella version, or solo drums, bass, keys, etc. that you can use to learn the song yourself. The software is mostly for desktop computers, and it doesn't always do a good job, but that's where Moises comes in.
There's a lot more to your iPhone's dialer screen than just entering phone numbers and hitting the green call button. It's not very obvious, but there are secret codes that you can enter on the dialer to find out information about your device, help troubleshoot issues, and mask outgoing calls, to name just a few things.
Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, is one of the most popular chat protocols on the internet. The technology can be connected to the Tor network to create an anonymous and secure chatroom — without the use of public IP addresses.
A mention of the deep web can bring to mind images of drugs, hackers, and other criminal activity. Despite the presence of these elements, the Tor network is a valuable tool for preserving privacy and anonymity. And browsing the deep web and any hidden services can be as simple as downloading the Tor Browser.
A proxy is a server that lets a client to connect to it and forward its traffic. This enables a certain "layer" of protection by masking your IP. An IP address can be used to learn your location and track you on the Internet, thus eliminating any form of anonymity that you may have.
Do you need proxy access, but cannot have it for some reason? The most common perpetrator behind the issue is the network you're trying to access the pages from. Some networks will block websites, then go as far as filtering out all of the web queries for terms like "proxy" because it can get around their filter. Quick web proxies can be used for tons of other things, though.
Encryped traffic and tunneling is a must when away from home to keep you and your information safe. SSH tunnels can be slow, and are heavily encrypted. VPNs are an all port solution, and proxies are just not what we need in most cases. Then, there is Tor.
I'm not going to lie. I was Catholic. But one of my reasons for my faithful departure was having to tell my innermost secrets— my sins— to a silhouetted figure behind a latticed screen. With the creepy enclosed booth structure and separation of sinner and confessor, its anonymity was clear, yet deceiving. You always knew the priest and he always knew you. If I wanted total privacy, was there really a need for this intermediary to God?
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...
CNN has compiled a list of the best ten ideas presented at this year's TED conference.
In my recent Darknet series, I attempted to connect the dots on the Deep Web. I covered the two largest anonymity networks on the Internet today, Tor and I2P. While my initial four articles were meant as an introduction, I ended up receiving a lot of interesting comments and messages asking the technical differences between the two. I'd like to thank all of you for letting me know what was on your minds, as you should always!
First, I have to apologize—this is really old news. But when it comes to Nele Azevedo's Minimum Monument project, it's well worth digging into the archives. It's one of the most amazing street art installations I've ever seen.
Here is the movie trailer for the Bansky film "EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP" I can't highly recommend this film enough which is now out on DVD and BluRay. It is truly a genius film about mad men. The film is clever and provides a tremendous insight into the art world and underground poster art culture.
Well this law was passed... Our privacy is slowly being pulled away from us. But I'm certainly not going to let it stop me. We'll just have to take more secure measures. If You Use Tor Browser, The FBI Just Labeled You a Criminal.
Google started culling Google+ accounts. There are two main targets: businesses and those who are using pseudonyms. For businesses, Google is promising to provide their own version of Facebook Pages, which will be released later this year. For those who use pseudonyms, they aren't so lucky. According to Google+'s community standards, users must "use the name your friends, family, or co-workers usually call you". The purpose of this rule is ostensibly to discourage spammers and people from set...
Working from home is already challenging. Add the threat of a cyberattack into the mix, and the situation gets even hairier.
If Null Byte had a large Batman-like spotlight calling for help, we would definitely be using it right now. However, we don't, so this is my digital equivalent. Information security is a huge field, far too much for one man to cover adequately, so I need your help!
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.
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?
Your IP (Internet Protocol) address is your unique ID on the internet. It's synonymous with your home address. Anyone in the world can contact your computer through its IP address, and send a retrieve information with it.
As Google+ became available to more people, it started running into issues of accounts being suspended due to names that did not sound "real". According to Google+'s community standards, names that users "commonly go by" were encouraged, but not pseudonyms. Those who were using pseudonyms in their Google+ profiles quickly found themselves suspended from using Google+.
Some of you might be using Tor to host hidden services, and some of you might not even know what hidden services are. If the latter's you, do not miss this article. Why? Because you can host your websites and services on the I2P darknet. It's safe and secure—it's anonymous.
WonderHowTo is made up niche communities called Worlds. If you've yet to join one (or create your own), get a taste below of what's going on in the community. Check in every Wednesday for a roundup of new activities and projects.
